CONFIDENTIAL
7. Once the Order in Council has been finally approved by Parliament, arrangements will be made for those eligible to become BN(0)s to apply, if they so wish, for that status, together with the passports in which the status will be recorded. These arrangements are outside the scope of the draft Order and are being considered separately between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Hong Kong. They will be announced in
due course.
Commentary on the provisions in the draft Order (1)
Citation, commencement and extent.
8.
Article 1 sets out the title and commencement date of the Order and ensures that it forms part of the law of Northern Ireland, the Channel
Islands, the Isle of Man and the Dependent Territories.
Commencement
should be no later than 1 July 1987 in order to continue the present practice of issuing passports which have a 10 year validity period. This arrangement will also give maximum time for the issuing authorities to cope with applications for BN (0) passports, and for third countries to grow accustomed to the new nationality status.
Connections with Hong Kong
9. Articles 2 and 3 should be read with the provisions of paragraph
2(1)(a) of the Schedule to the Hong Kong Act.
10. Article 2(1) defines BDTCs who are such by virtue of a connection with Hong Kong and who, unless they are also BDTCs by virtue of a seperate connection with another dependent territory (see paragraph 19 below) will therefore lose their BDTC status on 1 July 1997 and be entitled to acquire BN (0) status. It encompasses all the Hong Kong BDTCs listed in Annex 2, although in fact the great majority (about 3.19 million) of the roughly 3% million BDTCs in Hong Kong are BDTCs by birth,
and about 53,000 are BDTCS by registration or naturalisation. various categories covered by Article 2(1)(a) to 2(1)(f) are dealt with
in paragraphs 11 to 16 below.
The
1. The text of the Order refers, where appropriate, only to the masculine gender (ie he,his). The Interpretation Act 1978 provides that words importing the masculine gender include the feminine, and vice versa. The normal practice in United Kingdom legislation is to refer to the masculine gender in all suitable cases. The Order should therefore be
taken to include the feminine gender.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.