Ireland efore taking a final decision.
4. There are, however, a number of matters in the proposed
Nationality Bill on which the Home Office and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office disagree and it is essential that these
should be resolved before the Bill is put to the Home Affairs
Committee. The most difficult for us is the proposal for a two-
tier system of citizenship to which a number of dependent
You may have been
territories have raised strong objections.
given an indication of the depth of feeling on citizenship in
some of the remaining colonies during the recent visit to the
Home Office by the Governor of Hong Kong. Although each of
the territories concerned Hong Kong, Gibraltar and the
M
Falkland Islands are the main ones
claims to be a special
case, there are important political implications to be taken
into consideration and it is essential that we get it right
otherwise our relations will suffer, not only with the
dependencies concerned but also with their neighbouring
countries. We believe that a three-tier system of citizenship
on the lines of that proposed by the Governor of Hong Kong,
will go a long way towards resolving our problems and we
should like to pursue this further. We are also uneasy about
some of the other provisions, including the future of British
Subject status, the implications of transmission of citizen-
ship by descent for one generation only and the narrow
limitation of the Crown Servants' definition (for example,
some of the British Council staff whom you exclude actually
hold diplomatic rank in our Missions).
5. There is, in addition, the problem of the UKPH from East
Africa to whom it is not intended to give British Citizenship
because "the resulting immigration commitment would be quite
This conflicts with the present practice of
unacceptable".
CONFIDENTIAL
/permitting