PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
19 April 1974
84
His Excellency
Sir Murray MacLehose KCMG MBE
Governor
HONG KONG
NEX
69€ 95A
infidhs
Aps 22/4
Ween Mun
FUGITIVE OFFENDERS ACT
Enter & BV
BD
2214
A rapid note, as I shall be away from the office next week, in reply to your letter of 26 March.
1.
2. We have discussed the whole matter again with Lord Goronwy-Roberts on the basis of a paper of which I enclose a copy. He took the line that we hoped that it was not logical to approve the laws of Hong Kong and then to frustrate their operation. He accepted that we might very well be defeated in Whitehall or by the lawyers in Parliament. But he authorised us to have another try at getting agreement to a non-retrospective change of the Fugitive Öffenders Act. The Department will accordingly be putting up a draft to start the ball rolling once again with the Home Office at Ministerial level.
3. I should perhaps enter the caveat that Lord Goronwy- Roberts has not yet considered a submission which is on its way to him on the general question of Section 10 of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance. We made the point at our meeting with him that underlying official reluctance in the Home Office and the Law Officers to agree to a chenga in the Fugitive Offenders Act is their distrust of Section 10 on general legal grounds. It is likely that if a change of the double-criminality rule comes to be considered by Parliament, this will open up the whole question of Section 10, which Ministers have not hitherto had to defend in the House.
4.
Lord Goronwy-Roberts' initial reaction was that, while Section 10 might be repugnant within this country, it was designed for the peculiar circumstances of Hong Kong, and could be defended as such. Although the lawyers in Parliament might not like it, there was general parliamentary pressure to do something about corruption in Hong Kong. robust line might possibly not survive the study of our forthcoming submission, which deals with the non-disallowance
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PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL