We are thus clear that any Gibraltar assurance scheme offering nationality would require new UK primary legislation. I am sure I need not go through the arguments about why we would not be prepared to recommend this to Ministers.
A scheme which involves attracting people from Hong Kong to live in Gibraltar by means of immigration concessions which subsequently lead to citizenship by residence is of course a possibility. That is a matter for Gibraltar but I am sure that neither you nor we would particularly wish to encourage this as it would be inconsistent with the UK policy objectives for Hong Kong.
to
That leaves the option of offering immigration concessions people who are to remain in Hong Kong. There are no doubt a number of possible variations but there seem to be two basic ideas. The first is that outlined by the Deputy Governor in his letter of 16 October, namely to grant an immediate certificate of permanent residence to selected major investors from Hong Kong under a special scheme which did not require them to enter or take up residence in Gibraltar. If such assurances were to encourage recipients to stay in Hong Kong the certificate would have to have a long period of validity, certainly beyond 1997 and preferably for the holder's lifetime. The second formulation would involve issuing an open-ended guarantee that a certificate of permanent residence would be issued on arrival in Gibraltar. In either case the arrangement would presumably need to include provision for spouses and dependent children including those acquired or born after the assurances were issued.
We see considerable difficulties with the concept of granting of permanent residence to people who are to remain in Hong Kong. It would, as Mr Fifoot has pointed out, be a contradiction in fact if the Governor were to grant a certificate of permanent residence to a person who was essentially a non-resident and this could make it vulnerable to challenge in the courts. An alternative would be that the beneficiaries would have to visit Gibraltar in order to receive their certificates but this would presumably still not protect the scheme entirely from challenge in the courts and it would also involve a requirement to leave Hong Kong even if only for a short while. For these reasons we could not encourage such a scheme.
A scheme based on guarantees does not suffer from
from any of the technical disadvantages which arise with the other options. It may thus seem attractive as a way of adding to the world-wide offers of assurances to Hong Kong which it is UK Government policy to However, there is a fundamental problem with any Gibraltarian assurance scheme in that the position of Gibraltar as a dependent territory and the entitlement of Gibraltar BDTCs to register as British citizens under section 5 of the BNA 1981 mean that any arrangement will inevitably be seen as a back-door
encourage.
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