Mr Land
CONFIDENTIAL
Please consider there minches
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32
Les
Sir Leslie/ Monson
I have amended the second paragraph of the draft letter at B and should also like to suggest two further amendments
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(i) Terms of the proposed letter to Mr. de Basto (pp. 2-3 of the draft):
Mr. de Basto has in the past attempted to construe as an under-
taking a communication that was not so intended. I should
therefore prefer to delete X to X of the passage in question
and substitute: "The Secretary of State cannot give any
undertaking as to how future vacancies on the Supreme Court
that' Bench will be filled, but the views of the Hong Kong Bar
Association will be kept in mind." Mr. de Basto's letter also refers to the structure of the magistracy (second sentence of the penultimate paragraph). His contention I think is that it is wrong in principle that magistrates should be promoted from
one class to another. I do not think we can accept this, which
is the kind of half-baked theorising that the Hong Kong Bar
are liable to indulge in. I am therefore inclined to ignore
the point since it is merely incidental to the main theme
of Mr. de Basto's letter. But if you wished to cover the point
the following sentence could be added to our reply: "As regards
the organisation of the magistracy, the Secretary of State is
unable to accept the view expressed in your letter."
(ii) I should omit the last sentence of the draft. If special
provision was made to enable a judge recruited from the Bar
to earn
pension in a shorter time than a judge from the Service
and if the relevant factor for calculating the amount of pension
earned by a judge from the Bar was greater, then a judge from
the Bar would in fact enjoy better pension terms than a Service
judge even though in a particular case his pension might not
be as great as the pension earned by the latter - see
Sir Arthur Grattan-Bellew's minute of 22 October.
JCH Penie
(J.C. McPetrie)
28 October, 1970