TNAG-0979-FCO40-1198-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-British-nationality-1980 — Page 48

CONFIDENTIAL

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The Good Character Requirement

64. The present requirement is that if an applicant is to succeed in an application for naturalisation, or registration at the Secretary of State's discretion, the applicant must satisfy the Secretary of State that he is of good character. This is referred to in paragraphs 53 - 56 of the Green Paper. The limited amount of correspondence that has been received on this topic has tended to favour the introduction of objective tests as to character. But correspondents seem to have given little thought to the question whether more sophisticated standards could be devised to identify the person who could meet the basic tests, but might nevertheless be thought unsuitable for other

reasons.

The

65. The requirement is of long standing. It is admittedly an imprecise one, but it is not easy to devise an adequate substitute. Among the most difficult cases in which decisions have to be made are, for example, people who have not been before the courts but who are known to be engaged in criminal or other undesirable activities, who are heavily in debt, or whose activities are open to objection on grounds of public order or national security. great variety of circumstances revealed when candidates' backgrounds are investigated mean, in the Government's view, that a purely objective test, based for example, on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, would not be effective or sufficient, and would result in unsuitable people being

naturalised.

66. The real question to be considered is perhaps whether a person who has been living in this country the stipulated time, and has an adequate knowledge of the language and intends to go on living here, should have to meet require- ments as to his character. Should the fact of living here be sufficient? There can in the Government's view be no doubt that it would be generally offensive to public feeling if someone with recent criminal convictions were to be able to claim British Citizenship as a matter of course; and the same would apply to people of dubious reputation in other ways, or known to be working against the interests of this country, or to have no sense of loyalty to it. It would not be right to devalue the naturalisation process in this way. Since in the Government's view no objective tests would prove adequate. the Bill will propose that the requirement concerning character should be on

the same lines as in the existing law.

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