TNAG-2378-FCO40-3457-Hong-Kong-nationality-British-Nationality-(Hong-Kong)-Act-19-1991 — Page 267

нко

RECEIVE

CL

340/5

17 JAN 1991

PA

reflected in her fant lever to Heaps of 7/1.

Mr Morris, HKD

Morris,

الامن

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From:

Date:

1991

Paul Fifoot Legal Advisers

3 January 1991

сс Mr Burns

Ms Barrett

BRITISH NATIONALITY (HONG KONG) ACT: BRITISH UNDERTAKINGS

HKD, 340/14 (1990)

1. I have now had an opportunity to consider Mr Paul's submission of 20 December and I must confess to some unease about the introduction of "perceptions" into the criteria for determining a British undertaking, including the reference to Ministerial expectations if they too are based upon their own "perceptions".

2.

We have provided Mr Heap's Committee with a list of categories of what may be considered, as administrative guidelines, as "a British undertaking". An initial list was essential for a first run-through of possible candidates for acceptance as a British undertaking, but the initial list should not be treated as an exclusive list. If undertakings can establish, to the satisfaction of the Committee, a comparable close connection with the United Kingdom then we must be prepared to extend the list. However, any extension of the list must be made on a similar basis to the present list, that is to say a new category should only be accepted into the list if the relevant criteria are either objective qualifications or, if a subjective judgment is part of the criteria (as in Head D of the existing list), it is a subjective judgment of a defensible qualification; arbitrary decisions must be avoided. Any additional category should be agreed with ourselves and DTI before being included in the list. My recollection is that we have already added one change on this basis, in relation to accountancy partnerships.

3.

I would not exclude from adding to the list a category which, at least at first sight, would apply to only one undertaking which had some uniquely British connection, but even in this case it would be necessary to set down the criteria in terms of objective elements or a mixture of objective elements and a subjective judgment of a defensible qualification.

6PFABZ

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