E.R.
353
CC Mr Walker
Mr Montgomery, FCO
Mr Jackson
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Thank you for your note of 17 April with a draft response to question 10 for the further memorandum for the HAC.
I wonder if it might be better to give the Committee some explanation of why there are no assessments of future trends in settlement applications other than deductions from the current level. I thus suggest some recasting of the draft reply on the following lines:
"The levels of settlement applications in the Indian sub continent and Hong Kong have been monitored [for some years] and trends are noted as they start to develop. (Data on settlement applications in other countries has only been collected since 1989). The available data on settlement applications received each year since 1985 are given in the attached annex. They show that the level of applications in the Indian sub continent and Hong Kong has been fairly constant over those years and at present there is no reason to expect any substantial change in the next few years. It is not possible to make any more specific assessment of likely future trends because the level of applications depends on such factors as how many people settled in the United Kingdom decide to marry and live here with a spouse from abroad."
approximate?
I also found myself slightly puzzled by the column in the table headed "excluding children". It might be clearer to head the column "appropriate number of cases" and explain in the footnote how the approximation was derived.
B2 Division
VMD
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19 April 1990