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21 July 1993
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Charles Wardle Esq MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Home Office
Queen Anne's Gate
London
SW1H 9AT
London SWIA 2AH
From The Minister of State
HKCD 340/6.
28 JU 1993
this BJ
ہو
J22h
22
سمك
Year Charles
You wrote to me on 12 May to confirm your thinking on the position of the non-Chinese ethnic minorities in Hong Kong; which was that they had adequate safeguards and that there was no question of introducing primary legislation to make specific citizenship provision for them. This is the line that Ministers have subsequently taken. I have thought it worth writing to you again on this question, given the Parliamentary attention accorded to it recently (and culminating in debate in the House of Lords on 15 July). I would also like to raise with you a second Hong Kong nationality issue - that of British citizenship for the wives and widows of ex-servicemen.
Looking at the ground covered during discussion of the ethnic minorities in the Adjournment debate on 13 July, and the debate in the Lords prompted by Lord Bonham Carter's motion, what comes over is considerable sympathy for the Hong Kong position (supported by LegCo and by the Governor) that the Government should accommodate their request for citizenship and, as one speaker put it in the Lords' debate, considerable doubts as to whether the Government's assurances have stood the test of time. The Foreign Affairs Committee pressed me on this too when I gave evidence on 14 July in advance of their visit to Hong Kong and Peking in October. I undertook to draw to the Home Secretary's attention their request for further consideration of the case of the ethnic minorities (I enclose the relevant extract from the record).
On the wives and widows of ex-servicemen, I quite accept that primary legislation is not an option. But I am wondering whether there might not be scope to demonstrate that the
Government
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