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Reference
8.
A
D
D
A
CODE 18-77
The options now seem to be:
(A)
(B)
(C)
to press ahead with the present draft Declaration to widen it to include some but not all of the categories excluded from the present draft to widen it to cover all who will become BDTC by connection with Gibraltar, as desired
by the Gibraltar Government.
In the following paragraph I comment on these options.
9.
Option (A)
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
Gibraltar is amending its immigration and 'Gibraltarian status' Ordinances at the request of the FCO to accord with the Home Secretary's view expressed in Parliament on 28/1/81 that BDTCs who derive that citizenship from a connection with a particular territory should have the right of residence there. It may be argued on behalf of Gibraltar that it is not consistent with this position that Community National status should be denied to such citizens. In defence, Ministers could but say that a number of categories of CUKC by some connection with Gibraltar were excluded from the 1972 Declaration and there has been no change in the European context justifying including them now. This is a weak defence.
The present and proposed exclusion of categories may be criticised as being random rather than logical.
We have not yet been able to discover from our records the reason why the 1972 Declaration was limited in this way or whether it was intentional or unintentional. It appears however that the excluded categories generally had a less close connection with Gibraltar. But as indicated at paragraph 6 above the disadvantages of exclusion are now greater. I can see very few grounds on which the exclusion of an individual category can be convincingly defended.
The numbers of people excluded must be very small compared with the perhaps 20,000 which the Declaration covers. It is not valid to argue in defence that limitation is necessary to avoid repercussions elsewhere, since there are no other dependent territories in Europe and section 5 is limited to Gibraltar.
(iv). Although the exclusion of category 7 may be defensible (see below) in the other cases it seems that Ministers could find great difficulty in defending the present draft.
Option B.
(i)
Excluded category 7 would extend the present Declaration to people whose connection with Gibraltar is only through a grandparent. We excluded such people from the present draft on Home Office advice on the grounds that they were not included in the 1972 Declaration and that the general thrust of the 1981 Act was to confine the
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