TNAG-0971-FCO40-1190-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-in-the-UK-1980 — Page 219

HOME OFFICE

QUEEN ANNE'S GATE

LONDON SWIH 9AT

(14)

AKK 24312

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51 0 7 MAR 1980

DESK OFFICER

HAH Cortazzi Esq CMC INDEX

PA

REGISTRY Action Taken

5.7.3 AW 10/3

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Mo London SW1A 2AH

Hugh,

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

28 February 1980

Sex (16)

Spy Governor Hong Kong

IIA

Мк болиго багтай Mr Alueray

Thank you for your letter of 20 February about Vietnamese

refugees.

3/111

The prospect of an increase in the outflow of boat refugees as the year goes on is indeed an alarming one, though unfortunately not altogether surprising. I agree that this prospect makes it even more important to make the best speed we can in taking our existing quota from Hong Kong.

I discussed the problem last night with Sir Arthur Peterson and emphasised the concern felt in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and by Murray MacLehose about the disappointing rate recently and the effect this had on the attitude of other Governments, the US in particular.

We

He is fully seized of the seriousness of the problem and only yesterday had had a personal discussion with Mr David Ennals with the object of improving the performance of the Ockenden Venture, who have fallen well behind the other two voluntary bodies. can do a good deal to diminish the risk mentioned in your letter that the voluntary bodies may be trying to do too good a job in preparing refugees for settlement, but a more severe practical problem at the moment is that local authority offers of housing, on which target figures were based, are proving in the event to be more difficult than was thought to be turned into firm propos- als.

Sir Arthur Peterson is very well placed to assess this prob- lem by his experience as Director-General of the Greater London Council and we have to rely on his judgement on the more effective method and timing of bringing pressure to bear on local authorit- ies. One complication here, I am afraid, is that effective action depends on getting local authority councillors rather than officials to take action and the pending local government elections do not make this easy. I shall keep myself closely informed about all this and will maintain regular contact with Sir Arthur Peterson with the object of improving our performance as much as we can.

Ч

when ever

Mailey

(P J WOODFIELD).