TNAG-0660-FCO40-809-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-British-nationality-1977 — Page 164

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TO CERTAIN MISSIONS TELNO GUIDANCE 66 OF 28 MARCH 1977

PUBLICATION OF CONSULTATIVE DOCUMENT ON A NEW BRITISH NATIONALITY

LAW

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GENERAL

It is intended that the Home Secretary will make a statement on 27 April and lay before Parliament a Green Paper on a new British nationality law which would replace the British Nationality Acts 1948-65 as amended. His statement and supplementaries will be carried in the Verbatim Series, receipt of which, telegraphically, will indicate that the Green Paper has been published.

2. We are sending separately to all posts, including outposts, the final draft of the Green Paper which is confidential until publication, when it and this Guidance Telegram will become unclassified.

3.

As soon as possible after publication the COI will send to all posts supplies of the Green Paper, but these may not reach you until

a week or two after publication.

LINE TO TAKE

4.

You should draw on the terms of the Home Secretary's statement and may use this Guidance Telegram and the final draft of the Green / Paper after publication to answer enquiries from United Kingdom communities, the Press and other members of the public. It should be made clear that any views officials may give about an individual's future national status can only be provisional until a new law is enacted, since the Green Paper is a purely consultative, document. BACKGROUND

5.

To amplify the Home Secretary's statement and to explain the proposals in the Green Paper you should draw on the following:-

(a) The Green Paper is a consultative document. There will

(b)

be ample time for it to be studied and discussed both in the United Kingdom and by those governments and grouns overseas concerned. The Government are not likely to introduce legislation for two or three years; nor are they finally committed to the proposals, and indeed the Green Paper states various options on a number of points. The Government will be ready to listen to any views which may be expressed by Commonwealth/Colonial/Foreign Governments and interested bodies; they recognise the interest which many of these governments have in the British nationality law.

The present scheme of citizenship derives from the British Nationality Act 1948 which has been amended some 40 times. The law is now difficult to understand and revision is long overdue. Much has changed in the world and in the Commonwealth in the 30 years since passage of

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/the Act,