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British Nationality
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[LORD GEDDES. } noble Lord, Lord Macleod of Fuinary, to the best of my knowledge, they do have the right of abode in Hong Kong. My right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Home Office said in another place on 4th June:
It is the fact that nothing in the [Nationality] Bill changes the relationship and commitment of her Majesty's Government to the people of Hong Kong ".
The noble Lord the Minister commented in similar vein earlier this afternoon.
While there is no denying that such words were and are comforting, and while in no way imputing anything against their sincerity, those are words only and Hong Kong is looking for and, I submit, has every right so to look for--more than words. Hong Kong people are watching with great interest the progress of sugges- tions being put forward which would give the right of British citizenship to the citizens of Gibraltar. Of the 3 million people who will become citizens of the British dependent territories, 2-6 million (or 862 per cent.) live, as I have mentioned, in Hong Kong, and 27,000 (fewer than 1 per cent.) in Gibraltar.
I am advised that Hong Kong has been given a clear undertaking by the British Government that citizens of the British dependent territories will all be treated the same and that no exceptions will be made. Naturally enough, many potential citizens of the dependent territories" feel that a special case could be made out for them to become British citizens. Like Gibraltar, Hong Kong can never become independent. As with Gibraltar, Britain has for over a century had responsi- bility for Hong Kong and its people. Like Gibraltar, Hong Kong is of strategic importance to the United Kingdom. Additionally, Hong Kong is-as has been said this afternoon-of considerable economic signi- ficance to the United Kingdom.
My Lords, unlike my noble friend Lord Boyd- Carpenter, I do not claim specialised knowledge of Gibraltar in this context, so I feel it only right to adopt a neutral stance-at least at this stage. However, I am aware that if there are further moves to single out Gibraltar and give it special treatment, there will be great bitterness and resentment in Hong Kong. Rightly or wrongly (and I have my own views) it will be said that the principles of the Bill, which provide the three clearly defined types of citizenship, can be readily set aside by some Members of your Lordships' House and of another place, simply because the num- bers of people concerned in the territories involved are very small in immigration terms.
If this Bill is based on principles, then the people of Hong Kong at least expect those principles to be up- held. The Bill has the title of "Nationality ", but that is just about the one word it does not define. If the Bill passes as it presently stands, what nationality--- and I stress that word-will be held by those previously entitled to a Hong Kong British passport? During my domicile in Hong Kong, I was the proud possessor of such a passport. I have it here. In it I and at that stage maybe slightly fewer than 2·6 million others, were described as:
** British citizen, subject of the United Kingdom and Colonies ”.
That passport did not in itself give me or any of the others any right of abode or entitlement to work in the
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United Kingdom. It did, however, give me a recog- nised status, not only inside but perhaps more rele-
outside Hong Kong.
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My noble friend Lady Vickers has mentioned this point. Unless the requisite amendment is made to the Bill, what will happen to the Hong Kong passport- holder when entering a third country and being re- quired to fill in an immigration form? One box that will surely require completion is "nationality". As the Bill stands, what does he put? Is he British –my right honourable friend in another place said that the United Kingdom-Hong Kong relationship would not be changed or is he not? The noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, commented that passports must be made clear, and I totally endorse that comment. If that passport-holder is still British, would it not be possible for his passport to remain effectively exactly as it is, except that it would read, towards the bottom of page one,
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"British subject--citizen of British dependent territory "?
I want to emphasise this problem because I know that it is a very real one in the minds of those in Hong Kong. What may appear to us here at Westminster as possibly a semantic point is a very real, practical problem in South East Asia. The niceties of words and
face may seem to us to be of little import but, particularly to the Chinese (and it is important to consider attitudes on both sides of the border between Hong Kong and the Peoples' Republic of China) status has an importance far beyond its apparent immediate relevance. The feeling in Hong Kong was well précised in a recent editorial in the South China Morning Post, which finished with these words: "... if it transpires that in spite of all its lobbying and representa- tions Hong Kong has achieved little or nothing, London would do well to ponder the disillusionment this will cause. And not a few are going to ask whether the British Government can be trusted any more ".
The second point on which I should like to com- ment concerns the extraordinary anomalies regarding Clause 3, which gives every impression of discriminat- ing against certain types of overseas employment. Like many others, I feel strongly that citizenship is not and should not be related to employment. The nub of the problem seems to bite deepest, with respect to the right reverend Prelates,
unto the second and third generations ".
Rightly or wrongly, my reading of Clauses 2 and 3 of the Bill is that they give at best an inferior status to citizens by descent from which they cannot ascend to the status of citizen by birth, and at worst they deny the individual British citizenship. All sorts of ano- malies arise vis-à-vis the European Economic Com- munity, and other noble Lords have instanced them.
Without apologies, my Lords, I revert (at least mentally) to South-East Asia and pick up a point which was raised by my noble friend Lord Boyd- Carpenter. A British citizen, whether by birth or descent--I am reading this as if the Act had become law-recruited in the United Kingdom and working as a Crown servant outside the United Kingdom, let us say, for instance, in Japan, becomes the parent of a child born in Japan. That child is, if I understand Clause 13(1)(b) correctly, automatically a British citizen by birth. However, it would appear that a child who is also born in Japan of a British citizen by