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give me a central role in the allocation of citizenship places which I would not have in any other element of the package, and the discretionary powers which I would need would open up the scope for challenge by way of judicial review in the UK. It would lengthen the Bill and would be the one element of the package which could be criticised as requiring people to come to the UK, albeit for a limited period. My inclination, therefore, would be not to proceed with the secondment scheme.
5.
However, I know that the Foreign Secretary is concerned about the implications of dropping the proposal now that it has been announced. If colleagues share this concern I would be prepared to concede the point but would ask that the factors in the above paragraph are carefully weighed. If the scheme were to be included, my firm view is that the numbers should be limited to a maximum of 500 to be counted against places which would otherwise be available under the General Allocation Scheme
(see below). This would go some way towards meeting the
Governor's resistance to its inclusion. I invite colleagues to
take a view.
THE SELECTION SCHEME
If the approved secondment scheme is dropped, the selection
scheme will have four components:
6.
a)
a General Allocation Scheme (GAS) covering broad occupational groups across the public and private sectors and based on a points system;
b)
a
Key Entrepreneurs Scheme (KES)
Governor may recommend for
under which the
citizenship
selected
entrepreneurs the extent of whose investments and the numbers they employ make them invaluable to Hong Kong;
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