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and the country—is free to debate and decide for itself, since it concems us materially, in the course of the { legislation that will be laid before us.
In those paragraphs, the Government say that they “will seek parliamentary approval for legislation" to give
+
‘a new status, with an appropriate title,"
to those who are now British Dependent Territories citizens by reason of their connection with Hong Kong, and those who will become such in the next 12 or 13 years.
It is true that the Government say that that status “will not give them the right of abode"
in the United Kingdom. It does not. That is one of the absurdities and anomalies of a status which many of us thought should never have been created in the British Nationality Act 1981 and which has already had to be modified in the case of two of the territories to which it applied. But it is one thing for the Government to say that the new status will not give these people the right of abode in the United Kingdom. It is another to ignore the increasing pressure that will be brought to bear on the United Kingdom if we confer the kind of status adumbrated in this document, to admit its holders liberally and freely to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong in coming years, both before and after 1997. We would be foolish to underestimate the anxieties that exist or the pressures that may be deliberately engineered to that end in years to come. One can see the growth of such pressures already.
In September, The Times was writing:
"the British government should at least compensate for them” that is, the terms of the memorandum—–
“by giving as broad a definition as possible to those B.D.T. passport holders eligible to settle in Britain under the discretionary terms of the 1981 Nationality Act."
after a few weeks that had become:
“Even though Britain is in no position to open its doors to such numbers we will have to be prepared to treat such an emergency, if it happens, with particular humanity and urgency.” And today, in the same newspaper, we are told:
"The present generation will probably be granted British overseas citizenship, which does not give the right of abode in this country but implies an ultimate moral obligation on Britain if things go badly wrong.'
By what is proposed here we are incurring a virtually unlimited, though unacknowledged, liability to cede to pressure, a liability which could be of great consequence. for our own future.
The Government have courted that result by the manner in which they have represented the new status. They have represented it as a continuation of the present British dependent territory status. In no circumstances could any status of the people of Hong Kong after 1997 be properly regarded as a continuance of their present status as inhabitants of a British dependent territory.
In the draft the Government have repeatedly referred to the travel documents that would be issued as “British passports”. Now, we in the House may understand that a British passport issued to a British dependent territory citizen is not what the rest of the world would take it to be; but the rest of the world, and a great many of the people who will read this document, will think that a British passport means the same as a French passport— in other words, a passport the possession of which is equated with citizenship and with the rights of citizenship. It is a profound mistake on the part of the Government to use a concept and vocabulary that is bound to strengthen the internal and international pressures and to weaken the
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legal protections that we have against entry into this country where that has not been specifically decided in specific cases by the authorities of the United Kingdom.
I hope therefore that this proposal will be rethought, and will be rethought if not before, at any rate during, the course of the legislation that is to come before the House next year. The notion that the United Kingdom can confer a status that will outlast 1997 is itself the assertion of a falsehood. It represents the inadmissible division between citizenship and status on the one hand and sovereignty and power on the other. Where there is no sovereignty or power, there cannot be citizenship or status in any natural sense of the words. In this I concur entirely with what the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said. We are in danger of adopting formulae at this stage which will be interpreted in the future in a way that will be a rod for our own backs, and will not be to the advantage either of those who might eventually be covered by it.
We have made such mistakes before. I see that in the document there is a reference to
"passports issued by the United Kingdom.”
We have been through all that painfully in past years, when we found that the act of issuing passports by an authority responsible to the United Kingdom Government was interpreted as conferring all the rights naturally inherent in citizenship itself. As a result, we were held internationally as well as internally to be bound by the fact of the United Kingdom having issued passports to individuals, even though the citizenship possessed by those individuals was one that by our law did not carry the right of entry and abode to this country.
We have no need to make that mistake again. We are deceiving others and ourselves if we lay this foundation for a repetition of that mistake. I hope that reconsideration in the context of the future legislation, will enable us to avoid it.
7.7 pm
Mr. Peter Temple-Morris (Leominster): This is the best possible deal that we could get. It owes a lot to the reality of the people of Hong Kong, and the way in which they have accepted it, and the assessment team has said as much. Reality is the name of the game, and we salute the Hong Kong people for it.
I intend to make a short speech within the 10 minutes that are available to me. There are several realities. Reunification is unavoidable, and that fact has to be faced by all of us. Secondly, China has accepted, and we hope will go on accepting, the two systems. It is in her interest to do so. This point is absolutely crucial. It has been emphasised by both Front Benches, and will be emphasised again in the debate this evening. The crucial nature of this is that we must, in the 12 years to come, maintain the fact that it is in China's interest to make this
a success.
The opportunities are enormous. I emphasise this, as it has not yet been touched on. That area of the far east is perhaps the premier potential growth area in the world. Europe has its difficulties, and it may be said that it has reached a platean of achievement, although we are hoping it will get better, while the potential of expansion in the future in that area of the east is enormous.
China will want to control Hong Kong, and that point will play a vital role in all this. To think otherwise is to dexude oneself. Therefore, there are two points. First,
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