TNAG-1382-FCO40-1830-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-citizenship-1985 — Page 164

Our reference:

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C Leeks Esq

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Hong Kong Department

CONFIDENTIAL

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Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Clive House

Petty France

LONDON

SWL

Dear clitor

HMG's OBLIGATION TO ADMIT ITS NATIONALS WHO DO NOT HAVE THE

RIGHT OF ABODE

I hope you will not mind my writing to you in haste to put down a marker about an issue in the nationality/immigration field to which we pay considerable importance. This was directly raised by Lord Beaumont in the House of Lords Debate on 19 February. At column 492 of the Official Report, he stated that "if that were to happen, I understand that it is the considered opinion of experts that, under international law, such people would have a right of abode in the United Kingdom. I should like some assurance from the Government that they take this point and confirm that ruling".

I also note that Lady Young offered, at column 505, to write in response to questions that had been raised by speakers, or alternatively to return to these points at a later stage.

This question is a very complex one which has exercised the minds of the most Senior Law Officers in this country on at least three occasions in the past decade. No consistent conclusion has been arrived at. It is against this background that we have prepared relatively anodyne notes for supplementaries on this point should the question be raised. While we had hoped that these would go far enough, I suspect that sooner or later, and certainly in the context of the nationality order we shall have to come up with a more definitive response.

I need not go further into these issues now, save to say that it is one point on which the experts in the Foreign Office and the Home Office do not necessarily see absolutely eye to eye. We should need a good deal more mutual discussion before we were to arrive even at a common view that could then be put to the Law Officers' Department.

I would anticipate that in the light of these comments, the Foreign Office will not be rushing to supply the Minister with a draft response on this point to Lord Beaumont' Should you receive any indication however that this is one of the points that the Minister would like to cover, we should be grateful for as much notification as possible.

CONFIDENTIAL

Hours, age,

Kolen

RC MASEFIELD