86 16:36 GMT HO 2 LUNAR HOUSE
HONG KUNG NATIONALITY ORDER IN COUNCIL
DRAFT OPENING SPEECH (LORDS)
P.02
༢༽ •
The motion which the noble Lord Lord Cledwyn has moved invites the Government to withdraw the draft Hong Kong Nationality Order which is also before the House
today. I shall ask noble Lords not to support the Opposition motion since after
so many months of debate we believe it would be right now to make the Order.
2.
which
The arrangements/we propose have benefited from detailed consultations with Hong Kong as well as careful consideration by your Lordship
House. No Order could have been more carefully scrutinised. As a result, the
Government have moved a very long way indeed in response to the points which have
been made. During the debate in December 1984 on the future of Hong Kong my noble
friend Lady Young explained the nationality proposals
in the United
Kingdom Memorandum associated with the Sino-British Agreement. These proposals,
set out in the Schedule to the Hong Kong Act 1985, were debated in some detail in
this House before the Act was passed early last year. Your Lordships, many of whom
have considerable knowledge of Hong Kong, made a number of representations about
We took these on board and agreed to extend the statelessness
provisions to the grandchildren of former British Dependent Territories citizens if they were born stateless. And in fulfilment of commitments given by the Government
we debated the provisions of the draft Order at some length in January.
statelessness.
3. It is entirely right that Parliament should have considered the proposals so
carefully. The nationality arrangements will have a far reaching effect on the 34 million BDTCs in Hong Kong and it is essential to the success of the agreement
with the Chinese that we get them right. We have therefore given very careful consideration to all the points raised by your Lordships, We have gone a very long way towards meeting Hong Kong's wishes, and we believe that the proposals now before
the House are fair, consistent and comprehensive.
4.
We propose that the Order should come into effect on † July 1987. That will
give third countries time to get used to the new passport, and will enable passports
to continue to be issued with the normal 10 year validity period. But if we are
to make the necessary arrangements in an orderly way, we need to have the Order in place now so that we can get on with the detailed preparatory work which needs
to be done before next July,