THE OLD ADMIRALTY BUILDING,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
WHITEHALL
Pa
376
Pasa
m 20712.
UNCLASSIFIED
B Nelson Esq
AEF1
HM Treasury
Telephone 01-273 3742
HHH 040/28 ник
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
Your reference
Our reference
451/30
- 2 JAN 1986
Date
16 December 1985
DESK OFFICER
LADYEN
REQUSTRY Actido tak
7
Dear - Bagly
HONG KONG: ISSUE OF BRITISH
NATIONAL (OVERSEAS) PASSPORTS
1.
You wrote on 24 September to record our discussion about the financial arrangements surrounding the issue of BN (0) passports in Hong Kong.
Since then we have had further discussions within the FCO and obtained additional information. These have led us to conclude that the right course would in fact be to allow the Hong Kong Government to retain the whole of the passport fee and not just the amount required to cover their costs. Our reasons are that in essence the new arrangements for issuing passports in Hong Kong are a continuation of the former ones under which the Government of Hong Kong retained the full fees they collected and that on balance we do not believe that we should be justified in arguing that this is the moment for change. Indeed, to do so could go against our wider interests.
2.
The passport services which Hong Kong will perform on behalf of the Secretary of State will be entirely for persons who are connected with Hong Kong, since such a connection is a prerequisite to the acquisition of BN (0) status. If it were not for the unique circumstances connected with Hong Kong's future and the fact that passports issued in the name of the Governor would be unacceptable to the Chinese after Hong Kong reverts to their sovereignty, HMG would not be involved at all in the issue of passports to BN (0)'s in Hong Kong.
3. Under the present arrangements the/ Hong Kong Government charges and retains a fee which is the local currency equivalent of about £20 for a passport. Under the new arrangements we shall be asking them to charge £15 per passport (ie the current fee for a UK passport as laid down in the Consular Fees Order). Since it costs the Hong Kong Government about £8 to issue a passport the surplus revenue per issue would therefore be reduced from £12 to £7. Since the Hong Kong Government at present issues about 130,000 passports per year, its annual surplus revenue from passport work is about £1.56 million and it can reasonably expect that an income of this sort of order should continue. At the reduced £15 fee, Hong Kong would have to increase its volume of passport issues to over 220,000 annually to maintain the existing
/ level
...