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207
Hong Kong Vapenalty-
16 JANUARY PONG
remarkable one. Let us spend a little less time worrying about what will happen if it goes wrong and a httle more time making sure that it goes right.
9.16 pm
Mr. Tom Pendry (Stalybridge and Hyde): This is too important a debate to be dealt with in just over two and a half hours. That fact was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). Therefore, I will endeavour to be brief,
I must declare an interest, because I lived for some 18 months in Hong Kong. That is not as long as some of my hon. Friends lived there, but as a former middleweight boxing champion of Hong Kong perhaps I should again do battle for it on this occasion. Perhaps the only thing on which I agree-not generally but in this debate--with the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) is that it would be churlish and stupid in the extreme for any hon. Member to say that the Foreign Secretary and his team did not conclude by the joint agreement a mighty achievement, because it was a mighty achievement by any standard. I start from that premise, and I do not want to do anything to undermine that agreement.
On 5 December 1984 the Foreign Secretary said: "It would be too much to expect that this document"- that is the draft agreement-
"which has emerged from extremely complex and sometimes difficult negotiations, could provide the whole answer to every problem".—[Official Report, 5 December 1984; Vol. 69, c.
397.]
I certainly concur with that. We are debating the order in that context. Certainly it is far from perfect. To their credit, the Government have said that they will withdraw and revise the order if necessary to take account of the views of hon. Members and of their Lordships in another place and, of course, the views of the people of Hong Kong. In the Official Report of the other place on 19 February last year, Baroness Young said just that. She said that this was an "order with green edges" and that, if necessary, the Government would withdraw and revise it.
We know that on one important aspect at least there is no doubt that the people of Hong Kong speak with one loud voice, and that is on the problem of the inequities contained in the nationality provisions and their effects on a relatively small number of people in the colony, the non- Chinese ethnics. I refer to a small number deliberately, because Home Office Ministers in particular become paranoid when one talks about large numbers of potential immigrants. We are talking about 10.000 or so. The Minister of State is well aware that it is rare for both the official and unofficial members of the Legislative Council ever to reach a unanimous agreement, but they did so by means of the resolution that was referred to by a number of hon. Members.
The three points that are contained in the resolution have been agreed by both the official and the unofficial members of the Legislative Council. Those who follow Hong Kong affairs know that this is very rare. I was in Hong Kong in October, not as a guest of the Government but because I was on my way to Australia as a member of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation. I spent about 10 days in the colony. I was told that these modest demands were the least that the British Government could accept.
I have already praised the members of the joint declaration and its authors. However, what is being
667
ilong Kore Nationality,
1298
advanced hy both the non elected and the elected representatives of the Legislative Council will in no way
- 1 am
sure that the hon. Member for Christchurch agrees with
me undermine that declaration. No negotiations are required. It is a British problem. That is acknowledged by the Chinese. I refer those hon. Members who can read Chinese to the pro-Communist Chinese newspaper Wan Wei Po. In a recent editorial, it makes it very clear that this is a British problem. It says:
"To deal with this question, one cannot cut adrift history. One should not depart from reality. These people have always held British passports. If the result of these several changes causes them to lose their nationality, then, to them, this would be hard to accept."
I return to the numbers game. Of the 10,000 or so non- Chinese ethnics most of whom are members of the Indian community. very few of them intend to leave Hong Kong. However, if they did leave Hong Kong, what an enterprising lot they would be. They would fit very neatly indeed into the mould that the Prime Minister is for ever saying we should have in British industry. However, they do not wish to depart from the spirit of the joint declaration. They helped to build Hong Kong into the very strong economic unit that it is today. When the Minister replies to the debate, I hope that he will make clear how the ethnic Chinese can become Chinese nationals. That point is not clear to me. Article 6 of the Chinese nationality law states that
"any person who is born in China whose parents are stateless or of uncertain nationality should have settled in China as Chinese nationals".
These people are not stateless. They have British National (Overseas) passports. They
not of uncertain nationality, so how do they qualify? Article 7 says:
are
"Aliens or stateless persons who are willing to abide by China's constitutions and laws may acquire Chinese nationality upon approval of their applications, provided that (i) they are close relatives to Chinese nationals, or (ii) they have settled in China, or
(ii) they have other legitimate reasons.' Article 14 says:
"The acquisition, renunciation or restoration of Chinese nationality shall go through the formality of application". It is true that it is grace and favour. Nobody can be certain about it, so clearly it is a uniquely British problem.
It is as much a British problem as the fate of those who lived in Gibraltar or in the Falkland Islands when the British Government took a decision that was not very different from the one that they are taking now. These people or their ancestors, went to Hong Kong, as was made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) because it was part of the British Empire. As my hon. Friend said, they served the Crown loyally as soldiers, policemen and civil servants. They expected to be treated then, as now, by the British in the way in which the British were accustomed, so we are told, to deal with those who went to the colonies. I do not have time to dwell upon that point, because I might disagree with certain right hon. and hon. members, especially Conservative Members, about it. I do not wish to dwell, because of the time, either, upon the fate of the Vietnamese refugees in this country, or former service men. I am sure that other hon. Members will do so.
I wish to conclude with someting that is a little flowery, in line with the words that I have used about the colonies. It is from a recent editorial in the Hong Kong Standard: "The sun has long set upon the British Empire. What remains to be seen is whether an obligation going back 150 years and honour have sunk below the distant mountains."