From the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
LAST
REF
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
26 July 1974
110
New Ben,
NEA!
REF.
Thank you for your letter of 9 July about the death penalty in Hong Kong. I am indeed well aware how strongly people in Hong Kong feel about the death penalty. Jim Callaghan and I discussed the whole question with the Governor when he was over here last month.
The position, as I think you know, is that the death penalty is still part of Hong Kong law and that the Royal Prerogative of Mercy is delegated to the Governor under the Letters Patent and Royal Instructions of Hong Kong. Nevertheless it is constitutionally impossible for The Queen to empty Herself of Her Prerogative. It is therefore always open to any condemned man to petition Her for the use of Her residual Prerogative of Mercy. This is what happened last year when the condemned man Tsoi was reprieved. We can be quite sure that in any subsequent cases in Hong Kong a similar petition would be received.
This brings the Secretary of State into the centre of the question, since The Queen acts on his advice. Last year in the case of Tsoi, Sir Alec Douglas Home had to give his advice in the immediate context of the debates in the House on the death penalty in general and in Northern Ireland. I understand he concluded that there might well be a successful vote of censure in the House if an execution was allowed to go ahead in Hong Kong in those circumstances.
Ben T Ford Esq MP House of Commons SWI
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