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Secondly, I will continue to argue the case, which has been the position of the Hong Kong Government for the last six years, that more people from Hong Kong should have the right of abode in the United Kingdom. I repeated, recently, on a radio programme what had been the Hong Kong Government's position for six years. It's something I'd certainly said before. I don't think anybody in Hong Kong is under any illusions about what has been the position of the British Government and the British Official Opposition, but it appeared that there wasn't as great a knowledge as I think there should be about Hong Kong's position, back in the United Kingdom. As you know, under the British Nationality Scheme quite a lot of civil servants and those working in sensitive categories and entrepreneurial jobs have gained passports to the United Kingdom. There have been 50,000 allocated to heads of household which will of course mean many more people than that having the right of abode in the United Kingdom. But there are some particular groups that I feel particularly strongly about, one of which is the ethnic minority here in Hong Kong, whose position, once again, I'll continue to urge on the British Government when I return.

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On traffic and the problems of Tuen Mun. I think it goes more broadly than Tuen Mun. I think we've developed the northwest New Territories rather ahead, to put it mildly, of the development of an infrastructure to enable the people who live in those communities to travel as freely and easily as they would like. Now, we've been trying to deal with the problems of Tuen Mun as vigorously as possible. We've increased the ferry services by about 15 per cent and we've got further increases in mind; we're widening the Tuen Mun Road and Castle Peak Road; we've got the Country Park Section of Route Three which should be completed by 1998. But above all, above all, there is the Railway Development Strategy with, we hope, not only another line going north-south up to the border, but with a loop running round through the northwest New Territories down to Tuen Mun.

The Kowloon-Canton Railway are undertaking a feasibility study of that at the moment; they should have completed that by the early New Year. And as a result of an unofficial visit I made to Tuen Mun, in April I think it was, they are also looking at the possibility of extending that railway-line from Tuen Mun North to Tuen Mun Central, about which there is a lot of strong feeling in Tuen Mun. It would involve bridging-over the nullah, but that could well be possible if you were able to, I think, gain some commercial facilities as part of that development.

So, I totally accept that the most important way of dealing with the transport needs of the northwest New Territories is by improving railway facilities, though that will take a bit of time. It will be, I imagine, one of the biggest infrastructure projects for the SAR Government after 1997.

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