2
CONFIDENTIAL
Background
1.
The Governor has stated that he is anxious to return to Hong Kong with full authority to settle the appointments to the Executive and Legislative Councils which are due on 31 August. He seeks our agreement to increasing the size of the Legislative Council and to his proposed new appointments and reappointments.
In
2.
He has proposed an expansion of the numbers of Unofficials on the Legislative Council by eight from fifteen to twenty-three. order to retain the Official majority he has proposed that we should increase the number of Official members by eight. However, he has stated that some of these additional appointments will be held in reserve so that for the time being there would be an Unofficial majority in the Council. This seems a sensible way of proceeding. On the one hand, we do not want a large number of Officials attending the Legislative Council only with the object of retaining the Official majority: on the other we do not want to lose the possibility of an Official majority, partly because the Chinese Government might regard this as the first step towards more radical constitutional change and partly because we need to be able to retain power, in the last resort, to carry through the reforms set out in the Planning Paper in the face of Unofficial opposition. By accepting the Governor's solution the way is always open to make enough Official appointments to reintroduce the Official majority should that be considered necessary. It is unlikely the Chinese would see anything sinister in this but if they do they would undoubtedly find some way of letting us know and we would have to think again.
3.
The Governor has proposed that he should re appoint all Unofficials to the Legislative Council whose appointments expire this year (with the exception of Mrs Symons who he thinks should, for health reasons, be promoted to the less onerous Executive Council). There seems no objection to our agreeing to this. It will be helpful to retain the experience in order to cope with the large number of new members (for which, with the dropping of Mrs Symons and the increase in size, there are nine vacancies). It has to be remembered that twelve of the present fifteen numbers have been appointed over the last four
!
years.
CONFT DENTIAL
4. We cannot,