TNAG-1849-FCO40-2624-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 91

24 MAY '89 23:55

FROM COI TECH RADIO

TRANSCRIPT K SELECT COMMITTEE OF HONG KONG 24 MAY 1989

22

PAGE.055/051

MR PETER SHORE;

Referring to what Lord MacLehose told us on 10 May,

he said: "there are people in the Home Office who are

frightfully ingenious at keeping people out and I think

they could perfectly well think of a formula for letting

them in”.

In view of the notorious inflexibility of the Home

Office, do you think that this is a fair comment and if

you did turn your mind to finding as it were formulae to

be helpful and welcoming to people, do you think you would

in fact be faced with a very large number of people with

right of entry?

MR RENTON:

I do not think, Mr Shore, that we are unhelpful, I

really do not. I talked earlier about the difficulty of

seeing where there are solutions in this area that could,

in Sir Geoffrey Howe's words: "give us a resting place

:

that was better than the present arrangements".

Apart from the individual areas that we have touched

on in recent minutes, I have to say that, like the Foreign

and Commonwealth Secretary, I do not see such a resting

place at the present time but I will, we all will,

consider the points that you made in your Committee report

with very great care and we will also consider the points

that have been put to your Committee.