TNAG-0660-FCO40-809-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-British-nationality-1977 — Page 170

CODE 18-77

CONFIDENTIAL

Heads:

Planning Staff

CSAD

SAD SEAD

EAD

SWPD

RD

EESD

WAD

SED

MED

WED

NENAD

EIDE

Caribbean Department

EIDI

LAD

MVD

CCD

GGD

PDTD

WIAD

NAD

GIPD

FED

HKD

Reference......

R. & quickly preme with lasy Gi's 18.

CPO, Passport Office

RID

News Department

Mr Batsone, LA Consular Départment.

*

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2 0 APR 1977

JKK 240/1

GREEN PAPER ON A NEW NATIONALITY LAW

1. Ministers have decided that a Green Paper should be published in the next few weeks. A final draft document is expected to be considered by the Cabinet on 3 March. Subject to any decisions taken in Cabinet, the FCO may come under pressure to undertake consultations with Commonwealth and Colonial Governments before publication as rapidly as it may be accomplished in a proper manner. Ministers have agreed that the FCO should be given adequate time, but it is prudent to take preparatory steps in order to reduce the time we shall need after a final text of the discussion document becomes available.

2. The Green Paper will have a lengthy preface, which will briefly describe the principal options of a new scheme of citizenship. A copy is attached. The main body of the Green Paper is too long to reproduce for all adressess at this stage. Also attached is a draft guidance savingram, which would be despatched soon after the Cabinet have approved the draft Green Paper and have taken a decision on the date of publication. The text of the Green Paper, reproduced in the FCO, would be sent out separately a few days later, when the several hundred copies required became available. (HMSC will need about 2 weeks to print the document.) Publication day is planned to be one month after supplies of the Green Paper became available to NTD. This would determine publication day as on or after Good Friday, 3 April. I do not yet know the dates of the Parliamentary recess. When the Green Faper as printed by HMSO is published, the COI will send copies to all posts by air bag.

3. Some posts will have particular problems in presenting the proposals. They are listed below; there may be others. NID have drafted supplementary guidance for some of these, to be sent by separate savingrams. I should be grateful for your comments on the main savingram, and for comments or drafts from departments con- cerned with posts with special problems.

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CONFIDENTIAL

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