TNAG-1850-FCO40-2625-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 87

FCO40 Hong Kong Department Records 聯邦事務部香港部檔案 All

1989-06-12 19:40 COI RADIO TECH SERVICES.

01 928 8697

P.13

TRANSCRIPT C: SELECT COMMITTER ON HONG KONG

12 JUNE 1989

-12-

MR. IVAN LAWRENCE:

You said also, Sir David, that whatever we were told

when went there would be even more strongly told to us

now,

Does that not mean that we would have to expect even

more people coming to settle in the United Kingdom now

than we would have expected before this trouble in China?

SIR DAVID WILSON:

The point I was making was if a right of entry was

given to the potential 3.2 million...it is a pity in a way

that this figura keeps re-emerging because as I have said

a number of times the number who actually have British

passports or British travel documents of various kinds is

very much less than that it is about a third of that.

P

What I said before was that if this was given, my

judgement was that the number of people who would move

would be far less than that. That still remains my view

despite everything that has happened recently around Hong

Kong.

I think there are two very different scenarios:

one is the present, which is a scenario of worry in which people want reassurances but they do not necessarily feel

they want to move now.

The other is the scenario where

everything goes wrong, which all of us hope will

never

happen, but under that second scenario I suggest that

there is a moral obligation remaining, whether or not

anything has been done now.

4725

Comments

Approved members can add comments, bookmarks, and private notes.

No comments yet.

Private Research Note

Private notes are available after approval.