LAST
REF
NCA)
R°F.
From Peter Blaker, M.P.
House of Commons,
London, S.W.1
Confidential
Dear Secretary of State,
4th May 1967
During your meeting with the Hongkong Parliamentary Group yesterday I raised with you the question whether it would be worth studying the possibility of extending the existing arrangements for an' Ombudsman' in Hongkong.
As I said at the time, I entirely agree with your views about the impossibility of introducing an elected element into the Central Government. This means that there are bound to be substantial areas of governmental activity which do not fall within the province of any elected representative. This leads to a situation in which people like Mrs Elsie Elliott attract a lot more support than they deserve. In case your Department has not seen it, I enclose her latest circular letter. I may say that when I was in Hongkong last Autumn I had a talk of one-and-a-half hours with Mrs Elliott. I found her completely lacking in judgement and suffering from various obsessions, particularly about the Police. This made me all the more concerned about the fact that she does seem to have a certain following.
I discussed the Ombudsman proposal with a number of the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils. The point they made to me was that an Ombudsman in effect already exists in the form of what I believe is called "UMELCO". As I understand it, the system is that there is a roster on which at any one time two members of the Councils are available to hear complaints from any citizen. However, the system cannot, I think, be very fully developed since I was told that only two or three complaints come in every week, and people I talked to did not seem to be very much aware of these arrangements.
√2 C
12
RECEIVED IN ARCHIVES No. 63
10mAr967
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