Mr Male
Mr Cortazzi
CONFIDENTIAL
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دال
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HONG KONG: SIR DENYS ROBERTS' VISIT
1.
I am not happy about Hong Kong's proposed line for use with the press in connection with Sir Denys Roberts' visit to London (Hong Kong telegram no. 551 of 1 June).
2. I think that it would be playing matters down too much to say
in the announcement that Sir Denys Roberts will be having talks with "officials of HKIOD". It will almost certainly become known,
when Sir Denys Roberts is here, that he will also be seeing Lord Goronwy-Roberts (at 11.00 a.m. on 11 June) and the PUS (at 3.00 p.m. on the same day), as well as others. In my view, there is nothing very remarkable in someone as senior as the Colonial
Secretary in Hong Kong seeing senior officials and even Ministers in the Office. I would therefore propose to invite Hong Kong to amend the second sentence of their proposed announcement to read
"Sir Denys will spend about one week in London holding talks at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on matters of current interest".
3. I am more concerned however about the proposed unattributable line. The department has not so far been asked to consider amendments to the Letters Patent to expand the membership of the Legislative Council, though it may be that Sir Denys Roberts intends to take advantage of his visit to raise this point. More important, my understanding,as a result of Mr Cortazzi's recent visit to Hong Kong, is that the Governor has moved away from the idea of expanding the Legislative Council as a means of widening its social basis and is now thinking of trying to effect such a change
within the framework of a Council of the present size. If that is so, it would appear odd for anything to be said to the press, even unattributably, about an expansion of the Legislative Council. Nor does the mention of the Defence Costs Agreement in the
unattributable guidance strike me as apt. It is true that there is one matter concerning the implementation of last December's agreement about which the MOD and the Hong Kong Government are currently in correspondence. This concerns the land provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding as they apply to seven service sites which are held under crown lease, as opposed
CONFIDENTIAL