TNAG-1382-FCO40-1830-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-citizenship-1985 — Page 58

T MON

FILE

208

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

CONFIDENTIAL

WN Hyde Esq Home Office

Queen Anne's Gate LONDON SWIH 9AT

Lear

1

Wilfred,

HKK 04014

Z E MAY 1985

HONG KONG AGREEMENT: ORDER IN COUNCIL

43 May 1985

أميرا

203

1. Many thanks for your letter of 3 May. I have consulted the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, who is content that the Home Secretary should guide the nationality Order in Council arising from the Hong Kong Act through Parliament and that Home Office legal advisers should have lead responsibility for its drafting. As you say in your letter we shall need to keep in close touch over this: in particular we shall have to ensure that Hong Kong are content with the draft. Otherwise they will lobby, and as we know, this is liable to make the passage of legislation very much more

difficult.

2.

We look forward to receiving a fresh draft of the Order as soon as possible. It would be helpful for us to have also a detailed commentary on its provisions and on any of our or Hong Kong's proposals which you have not

and

can

at

included. When we have studied the draft Order commentary and have consulted our legal advisers, we arrange a meeting. In the light of our discussions the meeting we will send the draft text to Hong Kong. I told you I propose then to suggest to Hong Kong that they s. their experts over here in the hope that we can thrash out any remaining difficulties round a table.

As

3. I agree that the Order should make

make provision for 'hard' cases of 'mixed' BDTCs to be exempted from loss of BDTC status. The way in which you suggest we might do this seems to me to be generally satisfactory. Our lawyers can consider any further implications. We shall probably need to brief the Chinese in due course on what we are doing.

CAVRIDDATI AT