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Hong Kong
[LORD CLEDWYN OF PENRHOS.]
[ LORDS]
There is one point which I and others made on the previous occasion that has not been completely clarified: namely, the position with regard to identity cards. The Committee will know, having followed these debates carefully, that there is a good deal of nervousness about this situation in Hong Kong. The Chief Secretary there drew attention to Section 14 of Annex 1 to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which provides for the holding of permanent identity cards to be stated in future BN(O) passports as evidence of right of abode in Hong Kong; he has said that the Government would be discussing with the Chinese authorities the wording of the statement with a view to ensuring that BN(O) passport holders would not have to produce their identity cards for immigration clearance. That seems to me to be a very important point in regard to the holders. I understand that the objective will be to ensure that after 1997 a BN(O) passport holder will not need to produce an identity card in addition in order to establish right of abode in Hong Kong.
The noble Baroness was good enough to deal at length with the question of right of abode, but this is a slightly different matter upon which I am sure she will be able to enlighten us. If she says that this is a matter which will require further consultation with the Government of the Republic of China, I shall understand this perfectly well because I realise that a good deal more consultation needs to take place. Having said that, once again I should like to thank the noble Baroness for her helpful concession.
Lord Geddes: I am sure it will not surprise your Lordships that I have a great deal of sympathy with the general spirit lying behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury; but, with the greatest respect to him, I think it has been quite brilliantly trumped, if I may say so, by my noble friend on the Front Bench, with the gratifyingly welcome news of the extension to a further generation of British Overseas Citizenship. I thank her most sincerely for that. It is something that many of your Lordships and others have pressed for in past debates in the House. It is a significant step forward.
If I may say so also to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I am not at all sure that this particular amendment is in the right place. It seems to me to be an amendment that should rightly have been to the British Nationality Act itself. That is a very different subject on which many of your Lordships have held--and I am sure still hold—very strong views. This Bill seems to me to be the wrong place in which to put it. It has been mentioned that on racial grounds it might discriminate or would discriminate against ethnically Chinese. I raised the same point in the Hong Kong debate on 10th December, not on racial grounds but on purely moral grounds. It seemed to me to be quite indefensible to grant full British citizenship to an extreme minority and to exclude from that full British citizenship the majority of people with previously similar status. There never seemed to me to be any particular logic in that.
Others of your Lordships may disagree with my mathematics on the extension to the further generation of British Overseas Citizenship, but in
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round figures that seems to me to cover the period up to and slightly beyond 2050. There is some significance in the year 2050 because, even according to my simple arithmetic, it takes me 50 years beyond 1997. That surely is what the whole of this Bill is about. It is about 1997 and 50 years beyond that. It seems that the extension by my noble friend Lady Young of British overseas citizenship to a further generation has covered that point over the requisite period and, again, I thank my noble friend for it.
4 p.m.
My noble friend has mentioned, as, indeed, did the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, Article 7 of the Chinese nationality law. With respect, I think that Article 6 of that law also applies to an extent in that non-ethnic Chinese are permitted to apply for Chinese citizenship. I do not intend to detain the Committee any longer on this point. My views are well known from previous interjections in debates such as this. However, perhaps I should say that however unpalatable it may be, there must be trust on both sides. Nothing can be so totally buttoned up as to be absolutely safe. Life in itself is not safe. The Chinese have said-and certainly from my fairly extensive knowledge of the Chinese I would go along with it-that they will abide by the Anglo-Chino agreement, that they will abide by their own nationality law.
We are talking of a situation 65 years hence. I have my hopes, but who knows what kind of Government we shall have in this country then or may have had in the interim, let alone what kind of Government are in office in other parts of the world? I really cannot give my support to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I believe that it is misplaced and, if I may say so, I think that it is now redundant, thanks to the very welcome extension of British overseas citizenship which my noble friend on the Front Bench has mentioned.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: Throughout the debate so far there has been the note as to whether a general matter of confidence is important. I should like to say a few words about that. I believe that much of the anxiety behind the noble Lord's amendment and much of the thinking behind the anxiety expressed by the Hong Kong Indian Association, which has also written to me, concerns confidence. Your Lordships may not have had the opportunity to read the major document entitled, The Arrangements for testing the Acceptability in Hong Kong of the Draft Agreement on the future of the Territory, but it is a very powerful document.
I believe that for the first time in this kind of political education there has been a tremendous attempt to discover what everyone concerned in Hong Kong really feels-the 5 million members of that lovely part of the world, the 24 million BOTCs, and, I should have thought, the 6,000 (but I bow to the figure of 4,000 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury) important Indian minority there.
I have been most impressed by the summary of conclusions on page 32 of the document. Lest your Lordships' Committee should think that somehow I have discovered this information in some mysterious way, I must own to the fact that only yesterday