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Mr. Tony Banks: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Faulds: If you must, yes.

Mr. Banks: It is very sweet of you to give way to me, dear Friend. May I say to my very good Friend, whom I listen to carefully and from whom I have learnt a lot, that Martin Lee has made it clear that he intends to stay in Hong Kong after 30 June 1997. I suspect that he is running a damn sight more risks than my dear and hon. Friend is running, even with his bad cold.

Mr. Faulds: I am sorry that my hon. Friend had to comment on my cold, which somewhat spoils the organ that is my best achievement.

Mr. Banks: That is not what I have been told.

Mr. Faulds: I think that matter had better be dropped.

We must have differing views on this. I do not have the benefit of having met Martin Lee, but there are many like him arguing the odds to make it as difficult as they can under the transitional system. Once the transfer is achieved, however, they will be off with their passports tucked in their back pockets. There is no doubt of that at all.

There is one issue for which the British Government retain full responsibility, which they must accept and act on. There is still time for that. This is the issue that has been raised time and again this afternoon--the issue of British nationals in Hong Kong who in July 1997 will become stateless. It is no good arguing about that word; that is the position that they will be in. There are about 5,000 of them, I am told. Our spokesman on foreign

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affairs mentioned 10,000. But however many thousand, there are not that many. The Select Committees on Foreign Affairs of both 1989 and 1993 recommended that full citizenship be granted to them.

I am delighted that our spokesman, the admirable right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), has made the commitment that the Labour Government, who are coming along nicely, will keep the commitment that those chaps will be allowed British citizenship. It would really be shameful if this Government, which has done a number of fairly shameful things, did not enact the required legislation. If they do not, we will. We cannot abandon those unfortunate people.

The situation is ludicrous when one compares the figures in Macau and in Hong Kong. The citizens of Macau--all 450,000 of them--are entitled to Portuguese citizenship. That Portuguese citizenship would, in principle, through the EC, give them the right of abode in the United Kingdom. We are saying no to that right for 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 people. It is nonsense. We must in God's name provide for those last few thousand for whom we are responsible the same heartening settlement as the Portuguese Chinese are to have.

7.52 pm

Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton): The hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) could not be more wrong in attacking the governorship of Christopher Patten in Hong Kong. Had the hon. Gentleman been with me recently when I went round some of the housing estates in which the ordinary people of Hong Kong live, he would have seen that Chris Patten was not just respected, but loved by the people there. He is loved because he cares for the ordinary people of Hong Kong, and they know it.

Mr. Faulds: Does not the hon. and learned Gentleman think that those are the very properties that he would have been shown?

Sir Ivan Lawrence: Precisely. That is Chris Patten's great strength, and why he commands such support in Hong Kong. The hon. Gentleman must not let the fact that he is a leading official in the Anglo-Chinese parliamentary group--

Mr. Faulds: British-Chinese.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: --British-Chinese parliamentary group blinker him to the warm feelings that exist towards Governor Patten and the respect for his achievements, his caring and his affection for the people.

Hong Kong has a particular place in the hearts of the British people. Sadly, we can do nothing to stop it being taken from us, but there is much that we can still do to reassure those who are nervous about the transfer to China. We can do much to let the people of Hong Kong know that we care, as Governor Patten cares, and that we in this place will go on caring about Hong Kong, its people, its prosperity, its rights and its liberties.

I certainly hope that this will not be the last debate on Hong Kong before the handover next year. We can give the people of Hong Kong the reassurance that we will do anything we can in the council chambers of the world to make sure that China observes its undertakings. We have almost every reason for thinking that the Chinese will

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honour the joint declaration and the Basic Law. If there is any indication that they will not, we in this place will go on debating the issues that we know are close to the people of Hong Kong. We will consider their case and do what we can to allay their fears.

We must be prepared to face up to China if it looks as though it is trying to assert itself. As far as I have any authority to say so as chairman of the United Kingdom branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, we will look for acceptable ways of keeping a close and continuous interest in Hong Kong, as the joint declaration gives us not only the right but the obligation so to do.

We have no concerns about the future prosperity of Hong Kong. The people of Hong Kong, their outstanding administrators and, I think, the Beijing Government will ensure that that prosperity will endure and grow. However, as today's debate has made clear, we have great concerns about the liberties and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong--concerns that we can only hope the Beijing Government understand and recognise. Every act of Chinese repression, whether of a country such as Tibet, of groups or of individuals, stops those concerns dissolving away. We hope that the Chinese Government understand why we have those concerns.

The right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) is not often right, but he was certainly right in the major part of his speech today and he was right to say that we left democracy in Hong Kong a little late. I remember debate after debate in the 1980s--those one-and-a-half-hour debates at a late hour--where I had a speech that I was never able to deliver. By the time the two Front-Bench spokesmen had opened and wound up, and a handful of Hong Kong experts called Blaker, Miller, Bray, Johnston, Whitney and others had spoken, there was never an opportunity for someone like me to speak.

I will summarise that undelivered speech in a moment or two. It said: let us get the seeds of democracy in now, not later. Let us give those seeds the time to take, in an unaccustomed soil, and grow into saplings so strong that when the cold winds of anti-democracy start blowing from the north, the saplings will be strong enough to withstand them and endure. That was my speech, but I never got anywhere near putting that message across in the Chamber, although I did what I could behind the scenes.

We did delay. We delayed too long. When we planted the seeds, we gave them too little chance to grow before the handover and the chill, cold, hard winds came. Now we can see them blowing. The provisional LegCo is to replace the duly elected LegCo, although there is no mention of it in the joint declaration or the Basic Law. It is a matter that alarms and concerns the people of Hong Kong, as it must alarm and concern us.

On the face of it, there seems to be no point in a provisional LegCo, which will undoubtedly intervene in the government of Hong Kong and generate confusion and resentment. China has never even tried to explain why it wants a provisional LegCo that will cause confusion and resentment.

Mr. Faulds: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Ivan Lawrence: May I please continue?

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Mr. Faulds: I would like to correct the hon. and learned Gentleman, who is so wrong.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. It rests with the hon. Member who has the Floor to decide whether to give way. I understand that the hon. and learned Gentleman is not giving way.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: If I am wrong, I wish to be corrected.

Mr. Faulds: If I heard correctly, the hon. and learned Gentleman just said that he could not understand why China had behaved as it has. I thought that I had explained rather explicitly in my speech that it was because Governor Patten aborted the through-train arrangement that China introduced the provisional council.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: No, that was not a good enough explanation.

Mr. Faulds: It is a fact.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: I am afraid that the obvious explanation is that the Chinese are attempting to assert the fact that they are master, and to get in, as it were, at an early stage to make quite sure that nobody will dispute, when they take over, where that masterdom lies. That is the obvious conclusion that we must draw in the absence of any explanation other than that which the hon. Member for Warley, East, on behalf of the Chinese Government, offers.

Mr. Faulds: This is historically correct.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman seeks to intervene, he must do so in the proper way and not by a sedentary comments.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for protecting me.

I do not need to state, because it has often, and better, been stated by others, that that action alone has caused such alarm and concern that, if it grows, it will do inevitable harm to Hong Kong's long-term interests and future. I am pleased that the United Kingdom Government will continue to oppose the proposal. I am gratified that, the hon. Member for Warley, East apart, that view is common across the parties.

Then there is the cold blast that has blown from the Chinese mainland over the Bill of Rights--in an effort to reverse the amendment to the six Hong Kong ordinances. Happily, so far, it has not been proceeded with. Perhaps China is realising the depth of our concerns about civil liberties and human rights. Such actions cause shudders of alarm and concern which all the good governance of Governor Patten, and all the economic support and prosperity in Hong Kong, has not been able to deflect. I hope that we will continue to debate these matters regularly in this place so that the Government in Beijing can see that we are not letting those concerns go away, that we are not bored into apathy, that we care and will continue to care about Hong Kong and its people.

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