TNAG-1084-FCO40-1334-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-the-British-nationa-1981 — Page 96

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I would not myself accept that Clause 8 has an "undesirable effect" on the dependent territories. It has no effect on them whatsoever. Clause 8 (taken with clause 20 and 26(2)) does no more than in practice preserve for five years the effect of consular registration on the citizenship of a grandchild in the male line of a CUKC by birth..

What Hong Kong is saying, I take it, is that because that entitlement is being preserved for five years we must also preserve for five years the present position under which a CUKC born in Hong Kong is patrial if he has a grandparent of either sex born in the United Kingdom. I do not see how the Government could possibly accept the general argument that because one entitlement is being preserved for five years all other entitlements must be preserved for five years too. Acceptance of this general argument would make the Government's position on British Overseas citizens untenable.

The question therefore is this. Is the position of the child born in Hong Kong so similar to the position of the "consular registration" child born in a foreign country that the former must get British citizenship? In our view it is not. The "consular registration" child would, but for Clause 8 etc, get none of the citizenships created by the Bill. The Hong Kong child will get citizenship of the British Dependent Territories, which is the appropriate citizenship for him.

The Bill's main purpose is to split citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonie between those with ties here and those whose ties are with the dependencies, with a residual category for those who have connections with neither. I do not see how anyone could argue that it was wrong that a child born in a dependency to a father born here should be anything other than a British citizen by descent and a citizen of the British Dependent Territories by birth. The Government has stoutly and rightly maintained that citizenship of the British Dependent Territories is a distinctive, parallel, citizenshi for the dependencies, not inferior in its way to British citizenship. This stance woul be seriously weakened if we came forward with an amendment whose purpose was to enable British citizenship to be transmitted for a further generation to those who would in any case get citizenship of the British Dependent Territories (the implication being that citizenship of the British Dependent Territories was somehow not good enough).