J C White Esq STOCKHOLM
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Telephone 01- 213 4266
Your reference
Our reference
GVV HK/349/1
Date
6 August 1985
Dealulite,
SWEDISH VISA REQUIREMENTS ON HOLDERS OF BRITISH PASSPORTS WITHOUT RIGHT OF ABODE (BPHWRA)
1. Please refer to the letter dated 4 July addressed by John Boyd, Political Adviser, Hong Kong, to William Ehrman in Hong Kong Department, about a possible relaxation of Swedish visa requirements on Hong Kong BDTCS.
2.
The Swedish visa requirement was imposed unilaterally in 1978 as a consequence of our refusal to agree to a formal amendment to the 1947 Visa Abolition Agreement (VAA) limiting the latter to British passport holders with Right of Abode in the UK despite our confidential under- taking in 1968 to accept any BPHWRA unacceptable elsewhere. As you will see from Conyard's letter (GVV SCAN/349/1) to Donald of 6 May 1982, on legal advice we retaliated by refusing to accept some BPHWRA deportees on the grounds that the Swedish imposition of a visa requirement on BPHWRA had terminated our responsibility to accept such persons. The individuals involved would have become British Overseas Citizens (BOC) on 1 January 1983.
3.
We would be grateful if you could now consider sounding out the Swedes in order to establish whether they would be prepared to waive their 1978 visa requirement on BDTCS, BOCS and British Subjects who, together with British Citizens (BC), form the present day equivalents of the category of 'British Subjects' allowed visa free entry into Sweden under the 1947 VAA. You may wish to deploy the following arguments:
(a) Dependent Territories (apart from special cases like Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands) do not impose an entry clearance requirement on Swedish visitors (in the spirit of the 1947 Agreement).
(b) We are not aware that BDTCs (or BOCS and British Subjects) generally constitute an immigration problem to the Swedes.
(c) We do not expect the Swedes to grant visa-free entry to persons other than genuine visitors. We impose no entry clearance requirement on British nationals who do not possess Right of Abode who are merely visiting the UK.
(d) For practical purposes BDTCs have Right of Abode in their
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