Hong Kong

Part of Prayers – in the House of Commons at 10:32 am on 15 July 1988.

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Photo of Mr Richard Alexander Mr Richard Alexander , Newark 10:32, 15 July 1988

I join the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) in apologising to the House for the fact that I shall not be able to be here this afternoon to hear the winding-up speeches because I have a constituency duty, but I expect to stay for much of the debate.

It is appropriate that, in the week in which the Legislative Council has been debating the draft Basic Law, we are taking the opportunity to debate Hong Kong. It is perhaps natural that fears have been expressed in Hong Kong, but I believe that the speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary this morning has gone a considerable way to alleviate those fears. Yet confidence is at a low ebb and people fear for the future.

There has been a significant amount of emigration and, according to a briefing that some of us have received from the Hong Kong Institute of Personnel Management, it has, unfortunately, been highest among the most highly skilled people. More than 23 per cent. of those who have emigrated have secondary educational qualifications and more than 35 per cent. are graduates. They are the very people to whom Hong Kong would expect to look for its leaders in the venture that the territory will undertake in a few years. People feel that they will no longer have control over their basic destiny in the future that the draft Basic Law has mapped out for them and that they will have little or no democratic voice in shaping the country's future. Some people fear that this country has been washing its hands of the territory and that it cannot wait until everything is wound down after 1997. I do not believe that those fears will prove to be true, and those are not the views of the British Government about 1997.

The speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary will have done much to alleviate those sentiments. However, no one has a cast iron guarantee in political life. Even in this country, whose political system has evolved over centuries into one that is at least no worse than any other in the world, we do not have cast iron guarantees. We must say honestly and openly to those young people who have expressed their anxiety that nothing is absolutely certain under any regime. Their political future and political evolution are not matters that can be guaranteed for ever, but we should, we can and we shall insist that the letter and spirit of the Sino-British declaration should be adhered to in the Basic Law. If they are not adhered to—and there is some evidence to suggest that—we must insist that the Basic Law is effectively amended to entrench civil liberties and to give a clear devolution of power to the Hong Kong special administrative region. Hong Kong was promised that in the declaration and is entitled to expect the Government's support. It is the duty of the House and the Government to support the people of Hong Kong while we have the power to do so.

Any debate about Hong Kong must, as it has today, take into account the problem of refugees. The burden on the territory has been increasing day by day, until there are almost 13,500 Vietnamese refugees. To 15 June the arrival rate was eight times greater than it was in the same period last year and 3,000 people have been there for more than five years.

When this country began to take its share of refugees, a camp was set up in an open prison just outside my constituency and I visited it. I was impressed by the alertness of the people and by their spirit and determination to succeed and I was appalled by the suffering that I learnt they had undergone. The vast majority of them were decent people and I believe that they have settled well—certainly I have heard no complaints, and there are several hundred refugees in my area. I have never visited the camps in the territory—nor the territory itself—but is must be impossible to contemplate the totality of suffering that the 13,500 human beings incarcerated in the camps represent, and in particular the suffering of those who have been there for more than five years.

Britain has, of course, played its part in taking its share of refugees, and I acknowledge that. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has pressed the Vietnamese Government to deal better with the problem and with the conditions in their country, so the number of refugees should decline. If the Vietnamese Government were prepared to change their economic system, they would become more acceptable to the international community and the West would look more favourably on them.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary recognised, there are different types of refugees. Many are not refugees in the strict sense. They were originally civil servants and professional people with a basic command of English, so they settled well. Now those who claim to be refugees, we are told, are farmers, peasants and fishermen and are looking purely for a better way of life. They are not refugees in the normal sense of the word—no one is persecuting them for the kind of people that they are—so from 15 June the Hong Kong Government are to repatriate them unless they can prove that they are genuine refugees. I support that, as does my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary.

The fact that a finite limit has been put on the number of refugeess gives us an opportunity to begin to clear the backlog, knowing that by taking in more we shall not simply be creating vacancies for more economic refugees to try their luck in another country. I suggest to my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary that on a one-off basis we should consider taking more, and that we should argue the case for other humane Governments to do likewise. Clearing the backlog is perhaps an unfortunate expression. I do not wish people to think that we are just clearing the books for 1997. It is a moral question and an appalling human question, but I believe that this country can continue to play a leading and honourable part in its solution. I commend that course to my right hon. and learned Friend.