Governor
File No.
Page..
jöhe
CONFIDENTIAL
Ethnic Minorities
The Home Secretary may raise this with you when you see him tomorrow evening.
2. need be.
3.
4.
I attach a speaking note for you to draw on if
I also attach the relevant documents :
the text of Baroness Young's 1985 pledge;
subsequent Ministerial pledges;
the Home Office record of the LegCo delegation's meeting with the Home Secretary on 9 June;
a letter from Emily Lau to the Home Secretary dated 23 June, following up this point.
I also attach a submission from Home Office officials to the Home Secretary, dated 25 June, explaining the problem and suggesting he takes your mind on it tomorrow. The submission appears to
to be misleading; in para 5 it cites Baroness Young's 1985 pledge, and states that "she made it clear that she was referring to the non- ethnic Chinese BDTCs in Hong Kong". My reading of the full text of her remarks leads me to the opposite conclusion.
5.
The issue is complicated by the Home Secretary's own assurance to the LegCo delegation (see the record of the meeting), which appears to extend beyond just the ethnic minorities although the Home Office would argue, I think, that the whole conversation was in the context of the ethnic minorities.
4.
The Home Office will be extremely reluctant to allow a pledge applying to 3.5m people to go unchecked. But politically, I think you have to push the moral and, in Hong Kong at least, political case for restating it. There may also be a legal dimension; it is not clear whether the Home Office have thought of that. If the Home Office choose to restrict the pledge, it should not be with our acquiescence.
ĘZ
(Edward Llewellyn)
Personal Adviser to the Governor
29.6.93
c.c. Mr Dinham
Mr Ken Woodhouse, SB
CONFIDENTIAL
and quoting
a pledge from hard Waddington in 1986
which
G.F. $2
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