Britain debates citizenship for BN(O) holders

An attempt is being made by opposition politicians in the British Parliament to grant full British citizenship to British National (Overseas) passport holders - a status to which almost 3.5 million people in Hong Kong are entitled.

The move by Lord Avebury, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, follows a government review last year which shelved such ideas for fears that it would breach the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.

But the efforts to slip an amendment into an immigration bill, which would open a back door to Britain for its former colonial subjects, were unlikely to survive in the parliamentary committee process.

Moving his amendments in the House of Lords last week, aimed at granting full British citizenship to non-Chinese ethnic minority groups in Hong Kong who could not obtain SAR passports after the handover, Lord Avebury said others who held BN(O) passports should also be granted right of abode in Britain.

'In almost every other country of the world, the idea that a person could have a nationality but not a right of abode would be treated as nonsense,' he said in a committee-stage debate on the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill.

'The most fundamental right of a national is to enter, and reside in, the country of his nationality.'

But Labour government whip Lord Brett said current arrangements already catered to the needs of former British subjects. The amendments were later withdrawn.