CONFIDENTIAL
CRETARY
STATE
feel that we should take this opportunity to reconsider the earlier decision, since it seems to me that it would be far more preferable
to deal with the changes in the law needed to cater for the Gurkhas
and Hong Kong requirements in the same Bill. The advantage of proceeding in this way is that it will ensure that a charged and
controversial issue, with marked divisions of opinion on our own side, can be disposed of once and for all in this session.
Inclusion in next session's Armed Forces Bill of the amendments needed to deal with the Gurkha requirement will widen its scope in a way which could permit other amendments to the British
Nationality Act 1981 and the Immigration Rules to be tabled and present a further opportunity to debate on the Hong Kong assurances
issue. This seems highly undesirable to me and much better
avoided.
3. I hope that the inclusion of the small amendment needed to deal with the Gurkha requirement would not unduly complicate your Bill and I would hope that it could be done without offering scope for the wider ranging amendments which you wish to avoid. I can see that from a presentational viewpoint it may compound your problems with the Bill in that it will be seen as denying rights of British citizenship for a group of servants of the Crown while granting them to members of the Hong Kong community who owe no such allegiance. But that argument would not be avoided by including the amendment in the Armed Forces Bill. Moreover, it can be
presented in a positive way as removing an unintended benefit to
non-UK citizens who happen to be members of the Armed Forces and would be entirely consistent with our public position that Gurkhas remain Nepalese citizens at all time.
So far as the handling of the Armed Forces Bill is concerned, there will be considerable incidental advantages if it is not to be used as the vehicle for the amendments to deal with the Gurkha
4.
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