CONFIDENTIAL
Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1
J Fowler Esq
Criminal Department
Home Office
Whitehall SW1
Telephone 01-
Your reference
Our reference
Date
3 December 1973
૩૬૧
Thank you for sending me the draft record of our meeting of 27 November on the Fugitive Offenders Act. I would like to suggest a few amendments, particularly to paragraph 1. To make this a bit easier I have consolidated these into a suggested redraft of the first paragraph which I attach herewith.
2. Would you in addition agree the following changes to paragraph 2?
(i) Para. 2 (a). After
It
open to criticism." add "the
case of the Channel Islands was not an exact parallel, since the laws were there very closely assimilated to our
own.
11
(ii) Para. 2 (e).
Redraft as follows. "FCO Ministers had scrutinised and approved the Hong Kong Prevention of Bribery Ordinance, including Section 10. Recent events in Hong Kong had shown the value of this provision in circumstances where evidence of actual corruption was very difficult to get. But Section 10 had not at the time commanded, and still did not have, the support of the Law Officers Department."
"
3. As I told you on the telephone, despite your Department's hard work on the draft DOP paper mentioned in the minutes of our meeting, it has now been decided that we should not proceed by this channel, but should instead brief the Prime Minister through the procedure laid down in Sir John Hunt's letter to our PUS of 23 October, which was copied to Sir Arthur Peterson. This means that a committee of Permanent Secretaries will decide on the theme of the Prime Minister's briefs. In the particular case of the Fugitive Offenders Act we are, unfortunately, not yet in a position to put up an agreed brief with you. This means that we will have to make further bilateral efforts to reach an agreement before the Prime Minister goes to Hong Kong on 12 January. Since we are the demandeurs I think it is now up to us to propose a bilateral meeting of Ministers on the basis of your minutes of the 27 November meeting. I hope to be able to do this within the next week. Do you agree?
сс
M G de Winton Esq CBE MC Law Officers Dept.
Silent copes:
Sir D. Watson
Mr
Rushford.
A C Stuart
Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Dept
CONFIDENTIAL