A
CONFIDENTIAL
HITH 3.40|1
119
Lord Gordon Lennox
cc to:-
GNN 340/1(13) HK Mr Clift, HKGD
Mr Fearn, FID
Mr Culver, SED
Mr Partridge, MVD
Parliamentary Unit
Mr Holmes, Private Office
PARKPL
Mr. Hoare This19 Pl.consider.
Mr Rushford, Legal Advisers (WH 216)
done
AF13/9
113/10
FALKLAND ISLANDS (BRITISH CITIZENSHIP) (NO 2) BILL, LORD BRUCE OF DONNINGTON
(110)
1. In response to my minute of 31 August Mr Holmes has advised that FCO Ministers have decided to allow this Bill to go through without objection since, whatever attitude the Government take, the Bill is almost certain to get through anyway.
2.
Mr Holmes has confirmed that it is now for the Department to inform the Home Office, and, subject to your views, I propose to do so as in the attached draft letter to Mr Addison.
C-Attached 3.
I attach Mr Addison's letter of 17 August in which he invites comments on a draft Second Reading speech opposing the Bill. Since the Home Office lead on nationality questions they may wish to press for the Government to set out, as in Mr Addison's draft, its objections to the Bill on the grounds that even though it may be passed the opposition of the Government to it would have been made clear. It seems to me that this would make less difficult the task of explaining as our Ministers have instructed, particularly to Hong Kong, why there is no similarity with the case of the Falklands.
4.
In addition to the arguments in Mr Addison's draft speech, if it were decided that the Government should set out in Parliament its objections to the Bill, they could also say that if we were to follow the Gibraltar 'precedent', it would not be necessary to do more than give Falkland Islanders the right to register as British citizens, rather than to bestow that status as of right by Statute.
CONFIDENTIAL
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