CONFIDENTIAL
- 3 -
6.
in Council made in time, an announcement that a change in
the law was to be affected would suffice.
(c) Consultation on a sensitive case should I think at
first take more or less the form already adopted. The
Governor would send us the papers, which the Legal Advisers
would study. The department would then ask Ministers
whether they could contemplate an execution in the
circumstances.
If they could not, the procedure outlined
above would be set in hand. We should have to go through
the motions of seeking the concurrence of ExCo, fruitless
though this would be.
The row in Hong Kong would, of course, be very serious.
The Governor's telegrams numbers 788 and 789 make this clear.
7. The department's Legal Adviser agrees.
8 August 1973
Cc: Sir Eric Norris
22.6. Com.
R B Crowson
Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Department
CONFIDENTIAL