TNAG-1125-FCO40-1400-British-Nationality-Act-1981-and-the-Dependent-Territories-1982 — Page 195

RESTRICTED

not wish the Government of a dependent territory to be in a position to instruct our posts overseas to institute passport procedureswwhich were unacceptable and not in accordance with DSP Vol 25. It is a fact that if we issued Hong Kong passports to Hong Kong belongers, the Government of Hong Kong would be able to give us instructions on the procedures to be followed assports forssue such/and that this would place you and us in an

invidious position. For these reasons, we should prefer not to proceed with your proposal although we recognise that the position will remain far from satisfactory. We shall continue to review the problem of passport formats and procedures but we shall probably find that any changes will have to wait on the introduction of the European Community common format passport.

5. On mechanisation, your plea has been noted. As you know, we are currently working on the introduction of a machine- readable passport which is to be brought in at the same time we adopt the European Community common format passport. However, production of a machine-readable passport requires a radical change in our passport production methods. This is a new field and the planning and implementation is likely to take some time. We may not have moved far from the quill pen but we find that most other countries use similar production methods. Only the United States is ahead of the field in producing a machine-readable computer produced passport and we are likely to be the next.

Yours wald,

Ax

сс

All Consulates-General

in FRG & Berlin

Chanceries, The Hague & Bonn

HKGI

RESTRICTED

HM Paterson

Page 195Page 196