British Nationality Order 1993
[LORDS]
[LORD WILSON OF TILLYORN] grandchildren in certain circumstances will be able to obtain BOC passports and so they will be covered. But that is the end of the line. After those grandchildren there is no passport; there is no form of nationality. Anyhow, as has been argued before, those documents will be seen as travel documents rather than any
form of citizenship. Therefore we have a unique group of people. We are pressed by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong to treat them in a unique way. We must respond accordingly and with sympathy.
Perhaps I can mention one point which I was asked to raise by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, who has taken a great interest in these matters. He regrets that he cannot be here this evening. He has taken an interest in this matter since 1981 and has great sympathy for the Motion spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter.
I mention briefly the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. I have sympathy for anything that helps the work of the disciplined services in Hong Kong. Both the disciplined services of the Hong Kong Government and the Hong Kong people who have served in the United Kingdom forces in Hong Kong make a notable contribution. However, I find it hard to believe that we should distort the very careful arrangements that have been made for the British nationality package. As the order makes clear, they are complicated but very carefully worked out. It has been said that one needs a degree in computer science before one knows how the points will work out, but the essential matter is that those arrangements have been made with great care. I do not think that it would be right to distort them.
But I believe that it would be right to look sympathetically at the position of the non-Chinese ethnic minorities. I hope that when the Minister comes to sum up he will be able to tell us that the Government recognise that this is a group with special concerns which the Government will look at and try to meet.
7.23 p.m.
Lord Bramall: My Lords, the last time I was debating with the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter (which was on the subject of cricket) I found myself on the opposite side, although I greatly respected his views which subsequently turned out to be more appropriate than mine. I am glad to say that this time we are on the same side. I support most strongly what he and other noble Lords have said about proper citizenship for the non-ethnic Chinese minority of Hong Kong, largely of Indian origin.
I know that other noble Lords can do this so much better than I can. In particular, we have heard the speeches of my noble friend Baroness Dunn and my noble friend Lord Wilson of Tillyorn based on their great experience. I add my voice to theirs. In all this we would be backing only what the Hong Kong people themselves, through their Legislative Council, had carefully considered to be fair and just. We would all hope that in Hong Kong, where we have such a deep and binding obligation, Government action in respect
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of those people would still have a large moral and ethical content and would not be influenced purely by expediency. I believe that it is morally completely wrong to have a group of people who after 1997 will have no proper guarantee of citizenship but only travel documents and British national (overseas) status, and certainly no guaranteed long-term right of abode, so that they will be virtually stateless, whereas in a generation or so their descendants will become completely stateless and lose their passports. That will be so unless they take Chinese citizenship, which will be given automatically to those of Chinese origin. They may not want that, and indeed may not be offered it. The same applies to a return to their country of origin with which they have long since cut any ties or connections.
I know that in the statement great play has been made of the fact that if after 1997 any of these people are, for whatever reason, forced to leave Hong Kong and their position becomes untenable, successive governments here will give sympathetic consideration to granting them right of entry and abode in the United Kingdom. That statement purportedly committing all subsequent administrations (though I do not know how) is so vague and contains so many loopholes that it can hardly be expected to give this deeply and rightly worried group of people any confidence that they will not be abandoned in the near future, as they certainly will be abandoned in the longer term.
This comparatively small group of people, adding up with dependants to no more than 7,000 (some of whom I came to know well and worked with when I served under my noble friend Lord MacLehose of Beoch when he was Governor), went to Hong Kong a number of years ago. Many went there before the great influx from Shanghai at the end of the 1940s and early 1950s. They went there not because of any particular links with China but because the British were there and they wanted to serve them and work under their protection. This they have done in many capacities: frontier police, security guards, govern- ment clerks and so on. They have done that with great loyalty, pride and a sense of duty as servants of the Crown. They look upon themselves as British and have a right to be treated as such, just as the citizens of Gibraltar, who went to the rock to support the British garrison, have done and as a result have been rewarded with full British citizenship and right of abode.
As has been said by noble Lords, the great majority of those 7,000 would wish to continue to live in Hong Kong and serve the local administration, if they were allowed to do so. I do not think that there need be any fear of a mass exodus all at once. But I believe that the least we can honourably do, if we are to live up to our unique responsibility to this small group of loyal servants to the Crown, is offer them proper British citizenship and right of abode now or at least immediately after 1997. I believe that those who have been closer to the problem more recently than I have will agree with me that if this is to be done it must be