CONFIDENTIAL
3. Looking further ahead, it is quite likely that some eligible people will fail to apply in time, possibly through ignorance or bad luck, and I can see them feeling sufficiently strongly to take action in our courts to challenge the validity of the cut-off dates. Although there is a good chance that the courts would uphold the validity of the cut-off dates we would much prefer not to have to fight the battle.
4. Otherwise we are content with paragraph 2 as drafted and appreciate the draftsman's concern to compress the nationality provisions. With regard to his comment about the reference in the Memorandum to the right of abode in the United Kingdom, I confirm that this was deliberately omitted from our proposals for the Bill. I am sure he is right in supposing that the right of abode in the United Kingdom will feature in the parliamentary debates on the Bill but we shall achieve what we need by saying nothing in the Bill about this and it seems best to proceed in that way. We regard rights of abode as being exclusively an immigration, rather than a nationality, matter and would prefer not to mix them up.
Token
J Pakenham-Walsh
Legal Advisers Branch
CONFIDENTIAL
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