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of Mr Luard in my submission of 27 January. At that time we thought HMG's response rather meagre and suggested that we might ourselves press the Home Office, once most of the 116 were satisfactorily settled here, to accept a small further quota. Mr Luard agreed.
6. The indications are that the Home Office will treat sympathet- ically a request to increase our intake of Vietnamese refugees, but only when most of those so far accepted have been satisfactor- ily received and resettled here.
7. So far, 95 applications (not "over 100" as ir Boyden suggests) have been received from "boat people" to resettle here. 74 of these have been accepted and the remaining 21 are likely to be approved soon. A group of refugees arrived in the UK in February. A further 25 are due to-day. The other arrivals are to be spaced over a reasonable period of time, mainly because the capacity of the voluntary organisations to cope with such arrivals is limited. This leaves, out of our original quota of 116, 21 places still outstanding.
8. We had hoped to provide from within the agreed quota, a few places for the boat people who had been granted temporary asylum in Hong Kong. It became clear, however, that most of the refugees in Hong Kong atthat time had applied for, and been granted entry to, third countries: a considerable number were also allowed to remain in Hong Kong. There has, however, been a recent further influx of "boat people" into liong Kong: during May and June, 210 Vietnamese refugees werd landed there after having been rescued at sea by ocean-going vessels. Apart from this, Hong Kong has so far this year absorbed 1,500 Vietnamese who arrived on special flights from Saigon, and she expects to absorb up to another 2,000 people during the rest of the year. It is not unreasonable for us to try to retain in the meantime a small number of plucen should Hong Kong require them. as our quota is eventually filled, however, such places will need to be given to refugees elsewhere in immediate need of resettlement.
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