TNAG-1407-FCO40-1882-Future-of-Hong-Kong-passports-and-visas-1985 — Page 57

CODE 18-77 AWO Ltd. 7/84

Mr Marcelin NTD

UNCLASSIFIED

MrExam bef

14/11

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BNO PASSPORTS FOR HONG KONG

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Part of

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305

atlet

Refell

SPANISH,

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loy £3.75 million. par.

H. 14111

1. I understand that MVD have been unable to unearth any papers giving the background to the arrangements under which Hong Kong retain the fees which they charge for issuing UK visas and ECs. have therefore conducted a search of Finance Department's files.

2.

We

According to a minute written by Mr Streeton to the Exchequer and Audit Department in 1981 (copy attached) there is no formal agreement covering the arrangements. By long-standing Commonwealth convention the host Government of a Commonwealth country or Dependent Territory generally issues entry clearances to foreign nationals or other Commonwealth citizens on behalf of an unrepresented Commonwealth country. This is part of the reciprocal arrangement under which UK missions also issue visas for Commonwealth countries in countries where the latter are not represented. In each case, the normal arrangements has been that the government performing the service retains the whole of the fee.

3.

It is not clear from the papers who sets the level of the fee. In the case of the work which we perform for other Commonwealth countries, we know that we set the fee. By extension, where a Commonwealth country issues visas or Entry Certificates on our behalf it is presumably for that country to set the level of the fee.

According to the papers the Hong Kong government estimated that in 1979 they recovered less than 30% of their costs in fees. However, since entry certificates made up over one-third of the total issues and since a fee has now been introduced for EC issues, the percentage of costs recovered by the Hong Kong Government is presumably now much higher.

4.

The difficulties about using this as a precedent for BNO passports are that:

5.

(i)

it is part of an existing reciprocal arrangement,

(ii) the fees are (presumably) set by the government

performing the service under their own legislation,

The main precedent, therefore, seems to be existing passport issuing arrangements. The alternatives seem to be:-

(i)

to allow the Hong Kong Government to retain the whole of the fee (estimated annual revenue £3.75 million)

(ii) to allow the Hong Kong Government to retain a level of income equal to their current annual revenue from issuing passports (£2.6 million)

(iii) to allow the Hong Kong Government to retain a

/level