SECRET AND PERSONAL
IT MON
From the Private Secretary
10 DOWNING STREET
LONDON SWIA 2AA
Head Hus for
W
авата
A. B (2)
PIM Manda PS/Pus M Gillmore
M Melaren
JA
159
6 March 1990
sall 9/3
Deu
Castin
HONG KONG ASSURANCES:
LEGISLATION
The Prime Minister had a talk this morning with the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, as foreshadowed in my letter of yesterday, about the OD (K) paper dealing with citizenship for key Hong Kong personnel (OD (K) 90).
The Prime Minister said that the broad occupational groups for whom it was intended to make provision under the General Allocation Scheme went far too wide. If we went ahead on the basis proposed, opposition to the Bill within the Government's own ranks would increase and it was doubtful whether it could be got through the House. The starting point had to be our twin moral obligations: first to those vital to the successful administration of Hong Kong up to 1997: and second to those who could assure Hong Kong's continued prosperity and therefore the future of its five million inhabitants. The latter were principally entrepreneurs and managers. The number of occupational groups identified in the Home Secretary's paper needed to be drastically reduced, with a number eliminated altogether.
The Home Secretary said that the problem arose from the understandable desire of the Hong Kong Government to make it possible for people from a very broad range of occupational groups to be given the opportunity to acquire British citizenship. This would be easier to present. But he had reflected on the Prime Minister's point, and believed that he could produce an alternative scheme, which would eliminate altogether some of the groups and amalgamate the remainder into a few broad categories. The alternative would be to have an entirely subjective procedure for selecting beneficiaries: but this would be open to abuse. It was better to have a system.
The Foreign Secretary said that he understood the Hong Kong Government's reasons for wanting to extend the scheme across a large number of categories. But in practice the scheme would be elitist and there was no point in trying to conceal that.
The Prime Minister said that she was not satisfied that the scheme proposed in the Home Secretary's paper would cover some of the older entrepreneurs who had been responsible for building Hong Kong's prosperity. They would not want to go
SECRET AND PERSONAL
Page 195Page 196