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hit share Iku view
Hattersley Memorandum of 1976 which states that "the British
Government gives an assurance that the Government of Gibraltar will be consulted before publication of any proposals ... to enable them to make representations should they wish". The
Lord Privy Seal on his recent visit to Gibraltar confirmed that
previous British Government commitments stood, which the Gibraltarians will no doubt claim refers to the Hattersley
Memorandum. It is open to argument whether this undertaking is already sufficiently fulfilled by having given Gibraltarians the
opportunity to comment on the 1977 Green Paper. This, at least,
is the view at official level in the Home Office.
5. The Home Office do not appear to have formally considered the possibility of further consultations with the dependent territories. At official level, they have assumed that, having received comment on the Green Paper, there is no longer any obligation to do so. They are anxious not to delay completion of the work on the bill and to avoid any possibility of leaks
of the bill's contents. I sympathise with these wishes particularly
since it seems unlikely that any important new consideration will · arise from consultation with dependencies. However, consultations with the dependencies now on the principle features of the legislation need not delay the drafting of the bill and its completion date, and we should be able to draft the proposals under consideration in such a way that even if there were to be a leak nobody who has been taking an interest in the subject will be surprised to hear what was being considered. An additional advantage in approaching the Home Office now would be that we might be able to separate this subject from that of the number of categories of citizens and their titles which is proving so difficult to resolve. I fear that if we delay an approach to the Home Office about consultation with dependencies
until we are embroiled in discussion about titles of colonial
belongers we shall not be able to separate the two and the Home Office's opposition to our views on both subjects may be hardened. In my view, therefore, if there is to be consultation with the dependencies in any meaningful sense all the arguments
favour doing it without delay.
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