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dependency to be naturalised. The presentational difficulties with Hong Kong would have to be dealt with politically in the
Territory.
4.
They have
The Home Office see difficulties over the Crown Servants
issue, but do not appear to have closed their minds. represented to us that any amendment on wide lines will face the most detailed enquiry in Committee and that Ministers will
therefore find it impossible to put forward a credible explana-
tion of their intentions without stirring up fears in one
direction or the other.
5. However, a further ray of hope from the Home Office at our
meeting on 4 March was the possibility of amending the Bill to
allow registration for CBDTs rather than, as is at present
proposed, naturalisation. I think this could be presented to Hong Kong as an important achievement in one of their aims, ie
they would symbolically be better off than ''aliens''.
6. Our general objective at the recent meeting was to keep
the situation fluid and formally to reserve our position on
any possible changes until Sir Murray MacLehose has had a chance
to press his case with Ministers. Subject to these reservations, I aired with our Home Office colleagues a possible compromise
package, including the following elements: -
(a) an amendment to the Bill which would allow
Crown Servants in Hong Kong to be naturalised at
the Home Secretary's discretion, on the under-
standing that this device would be used sparingly
and, hopefully, never at all;
(b) an amendment to the Bill allowing for
registration rather than naturalisation for
CBDTS (this would probably mean drafting a new
special clause under Section 4 in Part I of
the Bill);
(c) Crown Service in the dependent territories
to count towards the qualifying residence period
(5 years) for naturalisation/registration as
British citizens after establishment in the UK
as CBDTs; the Home Office made the point that
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