HWB 18/55
24 November, 1967
6
Will you please refer to your letter to Hewitt CWI/66 9/36/34 of 16 October, with which you forwarded a copy of a letter from Mr. Jackson-Lipkin.
We are grateful to you for bringing this matter to our notice, but we do not feel called upon to take any action in connection with the complaint against Collard. For one thing we do not normally follow up personal complaints of this kind unless they are really serious ones: Jackson-Lipkin can always take the matter up with, or through, the Hong Kong authorities. Again the complaint is of a general nature, and we should require more specific information before we could consider following the matter up.
It seems clear that the real burden of Jackson-Lipkin's complaint (as is that of the complaints of the members of the legal and medical professions to which he refers in his letter) is not concerned with any lack of information about requirements for entry into Britain: it is directed against the controls themselves and the absence of any assurance that the persons concerned would be admitted to this country if, at some future date, their worst fears about Hong Kong were realised. This is not the fault or responsibility of the Hong Kong immigration authorities, but they naturally come in for a lot of resentment generated by this situation.
As regards your last paragraph, I confirm that Hong Kong have the necessary supplies of IM 1.
J.H. Howard, Esq.,
Home Office, Princeton House, 271, High Holborn, London, W.C. 1.
Ref.
LAST
REF.
(A.W. Gaminara)