Rebel Tories back down

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 6

Rebel Tories back down

NZPA-Reuter London Britain’s Conservative Party Government yesterday overrode its own rebellious Right-wing and softened proposed new immigration laws. The Government said that it planned to give immigrant women with British citizenship the same rights as men to bring husbands or fiances into the country. The new proposals retract concessions made to Conservative anti-immigration members of Parliament in December in a bid to gain their support for the new rules controlling entry into Britain.

Despite the concessions, more than 50 Right-wing members- then joined with Hie Opposition Labour Party to defeat the Government in the House of Commons. Labour rejects the Government’s entire immigration policy. In yesterday’s proposals, which will go before Parliament later, the Home Secretary, Mr William Whitelaw, suggests that when a foreign fiance goes to Britain to marry, the marriage must

last for one year and not two, as he had proposed to

Right-wingers. Should a marriage break down within one year, deportation need not now follow automatically. But the new proposals put the onus on the couple, not the authorities, of proving that a marriage is not one of convenience to help one partner enter the country.

The Government has also promised a review of the rules, which will bring Britain into line with the European Convention on Human Rights, after about two years. The rebel Conservatives said in December that the Government was breaking an election pledge to cut immigration and that about 3000 people, mainly from the Indian sub-continent, would be allowed in every year under the relaxed rule.

Political commentators said that most Conservative rebels had been persuaded not to vote against the measures and that the Government hoped Opposition members would not oppose the new proposals.