Mr Parten,
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Unider the British Nasionality (Hong Kong) Act 1990 - selection sheme, up to 3 sprints were available to applicants who had worked for a "British Undertaking". Peter Hoor and his team had the difficult BRITISH TRADE COMMISSION jous of defining which compomies could be so (although the final decision, and responsibility is the Governor's
defined,
HONG KONG.
alone, under the Act). My Segrim in HKD, and HQ DTi hiped 7 May 1992
out cut this end. Andrew Burns Esq CMG
AUS FCO London
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Mists
M. Ticketh : HUD
SB
ee PS / Mr Goodlad; PSI Ma Palten Sin scores; Mr. Miles; me
Anvitiaesting a remeating litter. I main Анталиија
of pit how much work man involved. Guld there he a letter of thanks to all invohned?
M.
Den Anton, tahun. What HKG's publicitig inter he is?
Heap's warning of contioncity is well
SELECTION
BRITISH NATIONALITY SELECTION SCHEME: BRITISH UNDERTAKINGS
1. Although we have not yet completed the work of the Committee which I have chaired to determine which are the British companies whose employees qualify for extra points under the nationality scheme, we are almost there. We await FCO endorsement for only just over 100 companies. No more are likely to be put into the pipeline.
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2. It might be useful nonetheless if before I leave I review the work that we have done on this since the Special Advisory Committee's inception in late 1990. It turned out to be an extraordinarily complex and time consuming exercise that imposed great demands on the time of the Committee members and stretched the Trade Commission's resources to the limit.
3. We put together what I think was a strong committee. Members were chosen because of their standing within the British business community, their in-depth local commercial knowledge and specialist skills. Little did they (or for that matter anyone else) know just how long and how protracted their involvement would become. Pretty well all the Committee members told me at various times that they would never have taken it on if they had known at the beginning what it involved. I enclose a list of the Committee members.
4. Working to guidelines drawn up between us and the FCO, a copy of which I enclose, it was a relatively simple task for the Committee to consider and make recommendations on several hundred companies whose Britishness was absolutely clear cut. However we were soon deluged with thousands of additional company names which in the main were extracted from individual application forms. Many were extremely difficult to deal with, and it soon became apparent that even with guidelines deliberately designed to provide maximum flexibility of interpretation, it was often necessary to make subjective and sometimes arbitrary decisions. As a result, some companies will have been narrowly rejected whilst others have been accepted by
HKD 340/3
21 MAY 1992
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14/0.