Home Office
PASSPORT DEPARTMENT
Clive House 70-78 Petty France London SW1H 9HD
JN Powell Esq
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Hong Kong Department
LONDON SW1A 1AH
Jam Jonathan.
Hong Kong:
Telephone 01-213 64.97
GTN 213
Business Hours
fa
т
Monday to Friday 9am to 4.30pm
172
Your reference
Our reference
HKK 040/28
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
10 SEP 1985
REIS HY
WFFICER
INDEX
PA
Action Taken
te
GP/84 1/6/7
7
September 1985
Passports
ok!
We agreed that I would produce a note on the arrangements for the issue of BN(0) passports in the light of paragraph 7(B) of Hong Kong telegram number 1862 of 10 September. I enclose such a note which you will wish to send Hong Kong for comments on the basis that the issues have yet to go to Ministers. It should not go to EXCO before then.
I take it that the paper would be used for press briefing. You should note some fudges. We talk of responsibility for issue of passports not of entitlement to a passport or of the exercise of discretion under the Royal Prerogative. If anyone is sufficiently clued up to draw the distinction between entitlement and discretion, our position may have to emerge that entitlement to hold does not affect our discretion to issue, and that in the situations identified in DSP 25 Chapter I we would deem the individual to hold the passport though we chose not to issue it.
On passport format we make no mention of machine readability. Whether we have this depends on whether we get the funds for computerisation of passport issue and may not have the answer to this until mid October.
In paragraph 9 on endorsements, no doubt you or Hong Kong will have some more felicitous wording for the steps which have to be undertaken before the right of abode issue can be settled.
Copies of this go to your FCO colleagues H Marcelin (NTD) and R Barnett (ECDI). I hope the former will continue to press Treasury for resolution of the fees costs and income issue and I remind them both that on format we still await advice from FCO on the general question of the common format 'look-a-like' passport of which BN (0)s with others will be recipients. In the Home Office copies also go to W Hyde, J Emery (B4) and D McDonough (B2).
Yous
Sincerely
Jim
J F NICHOLSON