Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
From the Minister of State
The Rt Hon The Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Yeon forms,
Year
6
16
30 May 1977
You wrote to John Tomlinson on 17 May enclosing a letter from your constituent, Mr P Ruskin of 43 Ladywell Way, West Farm Estate, Ponteland, Northumberland, about the death sentences recently passed in Ilong Kong on two British soldiers, Gunner George Puttock and Trooper Donald Bassett.
Gunner Puttock and Trooper Bassett were convicted in July last year of the murder of a Chinese civilian, Ng Fai, and sentenced to death. Their appeals against conviction were discussed by the Hong Kong Court of Appeal in February this year, and earlier this month both men submitted petitions for clemency to the Governor. The Governor, with his Executive Council, is expected to decide before the end of June whether or not they should be reprieved. However, I shall write to you again as soon as we hear from Hong Kong.
I cannot usefully comment on what your constituent has said about a possible parallel between what happened in Egypt some thirty years ago with regard to the case of a taxi-driver killed in a drunken brawl with three British soldiers, and the cases of Gunner Puttock and Trooper Bassett. But it is a fact that no deathi sentence has been carried out in Hong Kong since 1900. Also, the Governor announced in late 1975 that whenever
/he commuted