The Prime Minister
CONFIDENTIAL
HKK
0+0/4
NTY/85 1/387/4
420
Members of OD(K)
Mr Biffen
Mr Wakeham
Lord Denham
Sir Robert Armstrong
The Home Secretary
I attach for your approval a draft White Paper on the nationality
provisions of the Hong Kong Act 1985.
The purpose of the White Paper is to introduce the first draft
of an Order in Council to implement the nationality arrangements
of the Sino-British Agreement on the future of Hong Kong. This
draft is at Annex 1 of the draft White Paper.
You will recall that during the debates on the Hong Kong Bill,
Parliament expressed some concern that a matter of such improtance
as nationality was to be dealt with by Order in Council, thereby
restricting opportunity both for Parliamentary debate and to seek
amendments. We therefore agreed to lay before Parliament a
preliminary draft Order (described as "an order with green edges")
for full debate. We undertook to consider points made during those
debates, and to see whether they called for any changes to be made
to the draft Order in so far as these were consistent with the
Hong Kong Act. The draft Order would then subsequently be laid
before Parliament again in the usual way.
We are committed to making the Order within a year of the passing
of the Hong Kong Act, that is to say by April 1986. We are also
CONFIDENTIAL
Page 150Page 151