But in March, Finn Lau, a pro-democracy campaigner with a bounty on his head, revealed that the Home Office had spent more than eight months assessing his “good character”, causing significant delays with his British citizenship application. He was concerned that officials might be counting his activism against him.
The department aims to process 95 per cent of applications within six months, but complex cases can take longer.
Luke de Pulford, the human rights campaigner who co-founded IPAC, said: “We should not be legitimising Beijing’s outrageous persecution of innocent Hong Kongers.
“If officials don’t know the difference between an actual criminal and a high-profile victim of a Chinese bounty they have no business assessing visa applications.
“This truly makes a mockery of our commitments to Hong Kong, and I trust this embarrassing mistake will be rectified immediately.”
Ms Cheung said the Government was “already facing criticism for shamefully bending over backwards to accommodate Beijing, including through the approval of China’s mega-embassy in London despite serious concerns” and claimed that the “same pattern of deference” appeared to be behind her asylum delay.