}
HOME OFFICE
AKK 243/2
RECEIVED MI REG:STRY NO. 51
Queen Anne's Gate London SW1H 9AT 8 FEB 1980
P J Williamson Esq
Hong Kong and General Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office King Charles Street
LONDON SW 1A 2AH
Dear Patrick,
ISTRY
DEBtrect line of 213 7209- INDSwitchboard 84213 3000
Marion Taken
No
718.2
the Qugatule Mur Clift
Aw 18/2
Our reference
Date
RDI/79 13/23/40
12 February 1980
13/2
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you with to follow u the suggestion in the final paragraph before or after your visit to Hongkong
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES: ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN HONG KONG
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13.2.
Thank you for your letters of 25 January, with which you enclosed a copy of one of 24 January from the Hong Kong Commissioner to Christian Aid, and of 7 February, enclosing a copy of a telegram from Davies for Bray, about the possibility of Home Office funding for a British Council scheme to run an English language training programme in Hong Kong for Vietnamese refugees coming to the United Kingdom raised in your original letter of 4 December. I am sorry not to have sent you a substantive reply earlier but, as you know, we have been consulting DES and exploring the availability of funds.
We are, of course, very much in sympathy with the objective of speeding up the settlement of these refugees. We doubt, however, whether the Home Office would be justified in spending money on this particular scheme. Our understanding of the conditions in the transit camp in Argyle Street leads us to question how practicable it would be to ensure a reasonably regular attendance at classes. We have also been advised by the Department of Education and Science that the overall educational value of a short-term scheme on the lines proposed would not be very great. We note, too, that in his letter to Christian Aid, Bray said that there did not seem to be much point in the British Council's scheme.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that the consensus seems to be that 2 or 3 weeks' teaching of English in Hong Kong could make little difference to the ability of the refugees to cope with life in this country. To have any chance of making a significant difference to the rate of resettlement here it would be necessary to carry out an effective scheme of English tuition over a period of some months in Hong Kong. (Even then, it is far from clear that this would have the desired effect on the resettlement rate. The main constraints here will, we think, be much more the availablity of housing and the administrative problem of matching refugees to accommodation than knowledge of English.) Such a long-term scheme seems to be what Bray had in mind in his letter to Christian Aid; but, as he recognised, this would embrace refugees who, whatever the probability of them settling in an English-speaking country, might well not come to the United Kingdom. To finance such a wide-ranging scheme from UK Government funds would, we think, be more appropriate for your Department than for the Home Office.
1.