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Miss March 2 Паха Mary's (on)
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нко 213/11
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
3 OMAR 1990
21/2
Mr Paul- HKDS)
JC PS
PS/Mr Maude
PS/Mr Sainsbury
QUEEN ANNE'S GATE LONDON SWIH 9AT
Mr Gillmore
puss Spencer
WIAD
19 February 1990
PA
REGISTRY Action Taken
MVD
NTD
RMD
DESK OFFICER INDEX
DEPENDENT TERRITORIES WORK PERMIT QUOTA
Legal Adusers Mr Lidington
SAK
Thank you for your letter of 15 January about the proposal that the Dependent Territories Work Permit Quota should be abolished.
You may have seen from my letter of 11 January to Douglas Hurd that, although I should have preferred to abolish the whole of the quota, I am prepared to agree that an annual quota of 50 permits should continue to be available to dependent territories other than Hong Kong. I remain firmly of the view, however, that the quota of 150 permits for Hong Kong should be withdrawn. As Tim Eggar noted in his letter of 25 January to Peter Lloyd about the Work Permit Review the demand in the labour market is for highly skilled people and where possible this need is met without accepting these employees on a permanent basis. The Dependent Territories Work Permit Quota is inconsistent with our normal immigration policy as it allows unskilled people to work here and to settle. We have in the past accepted this in order to reflect our responsibility for the dependent territories by allowing some of their citizens to settle here when they would not otherwise qualify under the Immigration Rules. The forthcoming arrangements to grant British citizenship to 50,000 families provide for Hong Kong on a much larger scale and remove the justification for the special allocation of work permits.
I appreciate that the Chinese catering industry has gained considerable benefits from the quota over many years.
It was not, however, established with that end in mind and there is no particular reason why that industry should be granted an exemption from the normal immigration restrictions when many other industries could also argue that it would be helpful to be able to recruit cheaper labour from overseas. There is no reason why Chinese restaurants should not recruit staff from the resident labour force, like other similar industries.
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20/2.
Do you know mory Cantonese-
speaking warten?
The Rt Hon Michael Howard, QC, MP Secretary of State
Department of Employment