CONFIDENTIAL
2
This
which the FCO submitted to the Defence and External
Affairs Sub-Committee of the House of Commons
Select Committee on Expenditure late last year. memorandum, which was prepared in my department in consultation with FED, the Governor of Hong Kong and HM Embassy Peking, contains, inter alia, the following
statement:-:
"Hong Kong is a Crown Colony and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is responsible to Parliament for the Government- there.
"The Colony's constitution is contained in
Letters Patent and Royal Instructions issued
to the Governor of Hong Kong
The Governor is both the representative of, and responsible to, the Crown whose views are conveyed through the Secretary of State. The Governor is the supreme authority within the Colony.. However, the Letters Patenti formally reserve to the Crown the power of disallowance of any Ordinance enacted in Hong Kong and the power to legislate for the Colony by prerogative Order-in-Council. Furthermore, the UK Parliament has power to legislate for Hong Kong by Act of Parliament.
3. The memorandum was published on 24 March this year as Appendix 5 to the Third Report from the Expenditure Committee for the 1975/76. Session (House of Commons Paper 270). While the statement contained in this memorandum did not make use of the term "sovereignty", HMG's powers in Hong Kong are clearly ant out and the memorandum could be regarded as the most recent definitive public statement on the status of Hong Kong.
4. As will be apparent, it has not proved possible, at least so far, to discover a public statement by a Qu representative of HMG, whether in Parliament. or in inter- national organisation or elsewhere, containing a bald
CONFIDENTIAL
/assertion
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