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Hong Kong Bill
[Mr. J. Enoch Powell]
21 JANUARY 1985
for seven centuries. That was a much greater feat than he will achieve by relegating to an Order in Council the important alteration in our nationality law foreshadowed in the appendix to the agreement with China on Hong Kong.
It would not be true to say that there is an obligation on the Government to proceed by way of an Order in Council because an agreement is being implemented. Of course I accept that where legislation implements an international agreement into which the Government have entered, it is possible to argue that the scope for the House from the except by withdrawing confidence Government- -to amend its terms must necessarily be limited or non-existent. In this instance that is not the case. The proposals on British nationality form no part of the agreement that is to be ratified. They will simply be part of one of two memoranda that will be exchanged. The agreement has left Parliament free to consider and, if necessary, to amend if it so wishes, to reject-the alterations to citizenship alluded to in the memorandum.
My researches so far lead me to agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) who said that he did not remember any case in which a new form of British nationality, a new category of British national, had been created by Order in Council, and not by legislation.
Of course, it is possible and acceptable to alter by Order in Council the contents of a schedule to a British Nationality Act so as to accord with a change in the status of a territory to which that Order in Council refers. That, too, is not what is happening in this case. Indeed, even when alterations were made to the first schedule to the British Nationality Act 1948 Government were always punctilious to make it, and to meet its consequences, through primary legislation.
I should therefore like to put on record that the House is essentially being denied its right to proceed by Act of Parliament in creating a new category of British citizenship, and I am afraid that what seems to be a germinating agreement between the two Front Benches on an alternative is not satisfactory. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East says that if we could have a draft- presumably he means what we, under direct rule in Northern Ireland, would call "proposals for a draft”- published in advance, we could hold a debate on it, and then an Order in Council could be passed unamended. We cannot allow that to stand. We cannot allow it to be said that it is the equivalent of legislation if a Government lay a draft of an order and allow that draft to be debated before the order is brought before the House. The essence of our legislative procedure, which we have elaborated over many centuries, is that it enables us to concentrate successively on each different point that arises. Several different points relating to legislation have already been raised in the debate which it would be quite impossible, in any such procedure as appears to be gaining favour, to violate so that they could be debated separately and the Government forced to consider each on its merits. I wish to place on record that we should protest against being deprived of our right to have the law of British nationality altered only by Act of Parliament duly passed through all stages in both Houses.
I turn to the content of the proposals. We are going to create what the Bill calls
"a new form of British nationality."
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Hong Kong Bill
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Those who hold it are to be called British Nationals (Overseas). I do not think that I was mistaken-yet I had difficulty in crediting my ears when I heard the Foreign Secretary say that that description "carries no implication of a continuing constitutional relationship". It is absolute nonsense to say that. Why the very word “nationality”, let alone "British", carries constitutional implications. In proclaiming that we are doing something that has no constitutional implications in promising that we will create a “form of British nationality that has virtually no content"-we are using a definition that is calculated—I was going to say, to be ambiguous, but I shall go further to deceive, that will deceive and perhaps is intended to deceive.
As we learn in the White Paper, the document that those accredited with this status are to be given, is to be called a "British passport". Most people think that they know what is meant by that. Back in the 1960s most people thought that they knew. People generally-particularly those not learned in our law of nationality — would hardly credit that the “form of British nationality” that is to be created will not also convey the essential and central right of nationality, that this holder of a "British passport" can enter at will the country whose name, in the adjectival form "British", it carries.
The whole meaning and implication of a "form of British nationality" conferring the right to hold a “British passport" and conferring upon the holder the description of a “British national”, is that the recipients will be British nationals in the natural acceptance of that term. Nothing said in debates in the House and no reference to other parts of our nationality will disabuse the public or the world of those notions.
Sir John Page (Harrow, West): I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman with the greatest care, but I wonder whether the word "British" has, over so many years- he has more experience of this than anybody else retained the connotation of the British empire and Commonwealth of about 3,000 million people in 1945?
Mr. Powell: I can readily resolve the hon. Gentleman's difficulty. In 1981 we passed new nationality legislation which declared “British citizenship” and defined “British citizens" as the people who belonged specifically, and virtually exclusively, to this United Kingdom. So those who look to the word "British" will be all the more misled when they realise that we have called ourselves "British citizens" and thus-though I take no objection to it— arrogated to the United Kingdom the adjectival description of “British”. I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, since it enabled me to strengthen and reinforce the point that I was making.
All those who have taken part in these debates- naturally I am in agreement with them-hope for the best. We hope not only that we shall get to 1997 with this agreement intact but that the agreement will remain intact in the decades after 1997. But nobody in this House ought to be so rash as to act or legislate upon the assumption that that will be so. It is not difficult to imagine circumstances that could arise-political changes that could take place —in China, which would create an overpowering desire on the part of those holding this new status and these documents to secure admission to the United Kingdom -a country in which, despite all that is often said against it, there is a widespread desire to obtain admission
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