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CONFIDENTIAL
The legislation for Convention 17 was passed in December 1977 but we have still not received the improved declaration and I do not see that this can be included in the 1977 programme. Convention 144 is a new one and Hong Kong's first declaration, sent on 11 January, is based on existing administrative arrangements which apparently have not been changed or altered in any way. Furthermore we are proposing to Hong Kong that this declaration should be postponed and combined with the much improved declaration which they say will be possible in a few months' time.
4. It is true that the declaration in respect of Convention 90, for which the legislation was also passed in December 1977, was not sent to us until 3 Januray, but as a matter of only three days are involved I think we may properly leave this in the list for 1977.
5. The true figure for 1977 will thus be five declarations - Nos. 92, 94, 141, 101 and 90 - which is in line with the fore- cast in para. 4 of the enclosure to Sir Denys Roberts' letter of 4 January 1977 though it should be noted that Convention 141 replaced No. 42, which has slipped back to 1978. For the record I attach a table of all declarations made since the beginning of 1976.
4. but one fewer (No. 17) than the sumber listed in Lord Goreniny-Robert's letter Paragraph 4 - programme for 1978
97 amil.
6.
The proposals for this year are satisfactory, though Hong Kong have raised the figure to six declarations (from the four quoted in Mr Ho's letter of 4 November 1977) rather artificially by proposing two each for Conventions 17 and 144 instead of one. You will recall that they decided on this at the last moment in regard to No. 17 ( our telegram No. 959 of 12 December refers). As I mentioned above, we are suggesting that the two declarations on No. 144 should be combined into one later this year. As I see it, therefore, the number of declarations in 1978 will be seven: Nos. 17 (twice), 42 144, 32, 74 and 94.
Paragraph 5 improvements after 1978.
7. Appendix III to the report covers three of the Conventions referred to in para. 5 of my minute of 2 December 1977 and confirms that improvements under Conventions 10 and 58 (and also 59) must await the raising of the school-leaving age. Convention 97 remains under consideration and although we have done some preliminary research here I do not think we need at this stage raise the question of its detailed application. Convention 86 is covered by Appendix IV.
Appendix IV - remaining Conventions
8.
This answers most of the points which I raised in my minute of 2 December in regard to these Conventions. There are one or two minor modifications to existing declarations whose removal, it seems to me, would probably not involve major changes in Hong Kong law or practice: eg to remove those relating to the Convention 82 (Article 16) and 95 (Article 9)
/would
100
120.
140
CONFIDENTIAL CONFI