Some members of the sub-committee had visited Hong Kong and seen the closed camps for themselves. They had also spoken with Hong Kong government officials, who regard the closed camps as an unfortunate necessity. It is significant, therefore, that when the sub-committee (which was chaired by a Conservative MP) produced its report in April 1985, it went even further than the BRC in its criticsm of the closed camp policy. The sub-committee's recommendation was, quite simply, that "the closed camps be abolish their inmates transferred to open camps".
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The sub-committee's report, which has been accepted and published by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, also makes four recommendations regarding the future of the 12,000 Vietnamese refugees who are awaiting resettlement from closed and open camps in Hong Kong. Pointing out that 18% of these refugees have been in camps in Hong Kong for more than five years, it recommends that Britain should relax its rules regarding the entry of Vietnamese refugees with family members already in this country. If the Government were to do this. Britain would probably have to take in around another 500 Vietnamese refugees. The Home Affairs Committee has already received evidence to show that if Britain were to take such an initiative, other resettlement countries such as Australia and the USA would be prepared to take in some of the refugees now languishing in the closed camps of Hong Kong. Reinforcing this point, the report states that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office "should make the resolution of Hong Kong's Vietnamese problem a major priority in its dealings with foreign governments”.
The second section of the Home Affairs Committee report addresses itself to the situation of the Vietnamese in Britain. Here again, the Committee has endorsed all of the proposals submitted by the BRC and its member agencies. It states that until the Vietnamese refugees have adapted to life in Britain, the resettlement programme funded by the Home Office and co-ordinated by the BRC should be expanded in size and extended in time. The principal aims of the expanded programme should be to reduce the isolation of Vietnamese living in remote areas, to relieve the problems of overcrowding and homelessness for those who have moved into the cities, and to generate more employment and training opportunities for the Vietnamese.
The present Government shares with most others the tendency to shelve reports that are too critical of its own policy, and one can already anticipate the arguments that will be used to counter the recommendations of the all-party Home Affairs Committee. It will be said that if the family reunion criteria are relaxed for Vietnamese refugees, then they will have to be relaxed for all immigrants. Yet, as the Committee argues more than once in its report, refugees are a special category. They have been driven from their homes, and Britain has both a moral and a legal responsibility to assist them.
The Government is also likely to point to the problems experienced by the Vietnamese refugees already here as evidence that it is foolish to consider taking any more even the 500 which the Committee recommends. Yet the main thrust of the report is not that the Vietnamese are difficult to resettle, but that the Government has not put enough thought into making the resettlement
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