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give scope for judicial review in the UK.
But the paper does not do justice to the arguments in favour of the
scheme; these are:
i) British companies are enthusiastic about it. The British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong have confirmed their desire to participate (see BTC Hong Kong telno 59);
ii) Its attraction is that it offers companies the virtual
certainty of an assurance for their key people provided they are prepared to make the effort;
iii) By benefitting British companies in Hong Kong and Hong Kong
companies willing to forge British links, the scheme can be seen
to be furthering British business interests and Anglo-Hong Kong
links generally;
iv) We have been encouraging firms to lobby on behalf of the package as a whole on the basis that the Approved Secondment
Scheme is something from which they personally can benefit. If
the scheme is now dropped, then we will have been encouraging them on a slightly false basis;
v) The scheme was announced by the Secretary of State on
20 December. It would be embarrassing to drop it now, but more
importantly, for the reasons above, it is likely that we would
be criticised by the business lobby for doing so.
(b) Occupational Groups
3. The Home Secretary is concerned about any of the assurances
going to lower skilled groups and wishes to exclude from the package
the broad occupational groups with an emigration rate of 1% or less.
Under HKG's proposed scheme, the majority of people in these groups
would have less than a 0.5% chance of success. This proposal would
eliminate over 2 million people out of 2.6 million, or 78% of the
KIPACM (2)
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