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Hong Kong
15 JULY 1988
sing been used to describe one of the articles. That is not the way to influence those who will finally decide on the form that the Law will take.
I have been a friend of Hong Kong for many years, on a business and a personal level. I want the best possible arrangements for post-1997 Hong Kong, and I ask the people of Hong Kong to recognise what has been achieved, to use every means open to them to promote the changes and the clarifications that they justifiably want, but to do so in reasoned argument, not by using invective.
Other hon. Members have rightly raised the subject of the Vietnamese refugees. Hong Kong has an extraordinary record of having accepted 120,000 of them since 1975, of whom not one has been turned away from its shores. The rate has increased substantially recently. The figures are surprising: there were 8,000 arrivals in the first six months of this year-4,000 in June alone-compared with 405 in June last year. In those circumstances, it was surely right for Hong Kong to introduce its recent measures to try to control the influx and return the refugees.
Many of the genuine refugees have been resettled, about 13,000 of them here. We all remember weil the publicity that attended the boat people and the great surge of interest and emotion in this country at the time- local authorities provided housing, the community made them welcome and so on. Recently we have heard of success stories among those who arrived at that time, but the problem remains in Hong Kong. There are still about 16,000 there, some of whom have been there for a long time. About 2,500 have been there for more than six years and 425 have been in camps for more than nine years.
What are we doing to solve the problem? The answer is very little. We have undertaken to accept fewer than 500, who have to be members of families, and we are taking them at the rate of 20 a month. They are multipying at twice that rate. There are 40 births a month in the camps in Hong Kong. Taking 500 at 20 a month will not be of much help. In any event, those who are taken must be members of families. It is an extremely restrictive policy. It seems that we have virtually closed the door on the further intake of refugees to this country,
My right hon. and learned Friend referred to the problems of refugees, but I was disappointed that he suggested no new steps that should be taken. How can we expect other countries to take more of these refugees if we are not prepared to do so ourselves? We are not talking about people from the Indian subcontinent who want to improve their economic position. Instead, we are talking about genuine refugees. As the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) said, we are talking about people, not about statistics.
I shall not apologise for expressing a personal interest. My son worked for a time in a Hong Kong camp with the refugees. On subsequent visits I have had the opportunity of meeting some of these people. To make a small contribution myself, I wrote to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office about 18 months ago. I referred to the Bach family. I gave full details of it, the members of which have been in Hong Kong for many years. The family arrived there in 1980 and have been in the camps ever since. I wrote to say that I would be willing to sponsor them to come here. I said that I would try to find accommodation for them and a job. After 18 months
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my hon. Friend the Minister of State said, “No. I am sorry but the family cannot be admitted." It is dispiriting for the refugees to feel that there are no prospects for them.
When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State replies, I hope that he will be able to say something that will give hope to the refugees. I appreciate that their admittance is a Home Office responsibility, but my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has some influence in appropriate quarters. I hope that he will use it to ensure that provision is made for more of these refugees to come to Britain. That will encourage other countries to take more as well. I feel that we have a moral obligation to them. I suggest also that we have a moral obligation to the Government and people of Hong Kong, who have borne the refugee burden for far too long. I urge my right hon. and learned Friend to review the Government's immigration policy in the interests of the refugees and in the interests of the territory, whose future many of us regard with concern and affection.
1.27 pm
Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stortford): There are two major reasons why Hong Kong should be reassured about its future. The first reason is the negotiating ability of my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary. The second reason is that the People's Republic of China has carried out a formulation of the Basic Law in an open manner. These two factors should give the Kong Kong people and the House great confidence in believing that it is possible to get the Basic Law redrafted and put into a satisfactory condition so that Hong Kong may continue with the prosperity and freedom that its people now enjoy.
In the few minutes that are available to me I shall make one or two comments that might be helpful in getting those involved in the negotiations to understand the difficulties that face the Hong Kong people. The first issue is competence. Why, in view of what I have just said, should the Hong Kong people lack confidence in the future and in the negotiating procedure? Most people in Hong Kong left China and arrived in Hong Kong because it was a refuge and a way in which they could put behind them some of the horrific experiences that they and their families had to undergo during a series of revolutions and changes of Government, the last of which was the cultural revolution. Those events are not easily put out of people's minds, so the Chinese People's Republic and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary must go out of their way to reassure the people of Hong Kong that they will re-enter the world that they wanted to leave.
Many hon. Members have referred to the worrying number of emigrants, which has doubled again this year to 48,000. That is an estimate, and the number is probably greater. Of those emigrants, 75 per cent. are in the managerial and professional classes. When one considers economies in the world that have failed, one realises that they have failed because those classes of people have left. They are some of the most indebted and poverty-stricken countries in the world and they are a warning to us. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has tried to reassure the House by saying that that emigration is nothing unusual, but I believe that we should take it seriously.
Why are people leaving Hong Kong? It is because they feel that their individual freedom will be restricted under the Basic Law as it has been promulgated. They fear that their quality of life will worsen, and they fear for their
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