TNAG-1850-FCO40-2625-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 90

1989-06-12 19:41

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TRANSCRIPT C: SELECT COMMITTEE ON HONG KONG

12 JUNE 1989

-15-

MR. TED ROWLANDS:

would

Your scenario would oblige any British Government or any immigration policy here to accept whatever number wished to come and it would therefore be determined,

it not, by every movement and shift of opinion, necessarily in Hong Kong but in Peking as well?

not

SIR DAVID VILSÒN:

Only if every shift of opinion meant that people

actually left.

There are always people who do leave the moment there is a shift of opinion or whenever the stock market goes down, but that is not true of the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people would stay, waiting

tu see how things work out.

Perhaps there is another general point I could make; that is that the sort of numbers that I have been talking about do create concern at this end when they are looked at purely in terms of the United Kingdom, but in terms of the whole European Community they are not large numbers.

CHAIRMAN;

Perhaps Kr. Temple-Morris would go on from that

specific point because I know he has some

questions to ask!

more specific

.

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