CONFIDENTIAL
SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
HKB 2+3/28
Miss Магоден
Mr Fostmow
Mr Haswel
The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Howe QC MP Foreign and Commonwealth Office Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A 2AL
HICD
aps (15
наре
2 MARSHAM STREET
LONDON SW1P 3EB
01-276 3000
My ref:
Your ref:
Ds Llard Glenarthur Pj Mr Ecper Mr Gillmore
Мї маски
Wo% PINNE
Dear foreign Secretary
5 June 1989
Here's in Sea
NEWS d.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INDO-CHINESE REFUGEES:
RESETTLEMENT
13
Thank you for my copy of your minute of 24 May to the Home Secretary.
I support the admission of a further number of refugees, although the issues you address are not primarily for me. I shall attend the OD meeting. My particular concerns lie in the housing implications of your proposal. A further influx of Vietnamese Refugees will demand accommodation in public housing most of them, inevitably, preferring London. This will greatly exacerbate the acute shortage of such housing in London and the numbers of homeless.
It will be essential to insist that they be housed, and stay put, in an area of the country with surplus housing perhaps Scotland or the North of England. This should be made a condition of accepting them. It will be necessary for us to make the necessary arrangements with the authorities concerned.
I am copying this to Douglas Hurd and also to Sir Robin Butler.
Bohm sinceres
BB
вд
NICHOLAS RIDLEY
(approved by the Senetary of State and signed in his absence),