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7. However, a specialist Select Committee on the Dependent Territories would appear to have the following disadvantages from the point of view of the Government:
a.
b.
C.
i
Communications between the Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary and the Governors and Governments of the dependent terri- tories are necessarily confidential. No Select Committee could be made privy to the full range of them. Its ability therefore to enquire into, and keep a watching brief over, the formation and implementation of policy would be severely limited by the requirements of confidentiality and security. It may be assumed that FCO Ministers would normally be unwilling to give more confidential information to a Select Committee than they would, if there was clear advantage in it, be prepared to give to Parliament as a whole in the. course of debate.
The dependent territories include Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and Belize, all territories which are the subject of disputes with foreign Governments. These disputes are the subject of negotiation from time to time and FCO Ministers could scarcely be expected to take a Select Committee into their confidence in regard to negotiations with the claimant Governments. The possible damage to HMG's negotiating position in any of these cases would be bound to set strict limits to anything Ministers might be willing to say. Because the New Hebrides is a Condominium, Ministers would be bound to observe great discretion in speaking to a Committee the Assemblée Nationale and the French Government could legitimately . take offence.
&
Besides the 5 territories mentioned in (b), it is plain from the Report on the Future of the Dependent Territories that only a minority of the other dependencies are likely to be able to progress to independence during the next few years in the traditional way, eg the Seychelles, the
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