1717 OCT 31 16:03
HKGO LONDON
P.12/14
071 493 1964 P.03
- 11
A. I hope so but what I was saying to you carlier that what we are trying to do to explaingto the Americans the absolute necessity of this sort of arrangement if the whole comprehensive plan of action is to go on.
If we cannot get this sort of arrangement in place then the consequence is that round the area the CPA will break down. As indeed probably you all know the CPA has in fact in practice been breaking down around the area not in Hong Kong but in some other places.
Question inaudible.
A. Two not necessarily connected questions, I very briefly had a discussion with Mr Peter Lloyd who is the home office minister dealing with this question and at the TVC dinner, and that was simply to register the fact that the processing of the British nationalities scheme was going well in Hong Kong, and we had a brief exchange on it I remember making the paint that the number of people who would have applied in Hong Kong was really very good because we had something like 20,000 more applications than there were places available in the first tranche as they call it, and that really was not bad because it means that people have in a way self-selected being highly alert and highly intelligent everybody who was thinking of applying could calculate how many points they might get and those that reckoned they had no chance
didn't
at all won't apply. So instead of having a very large number of dissatisfied customers, as it were, we will only finish up with 20,000 people who unfortunately won't get the passport, so I think the scheme is going very well.
Your second one was confidence level amongst professionals, very difficult that sort of thing because it's a sort of boil brush question. My