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3.
ses without a fixed date have not been issued before in
Hong Kong. The second reason is that there are many
thousands of land leases in the New Territories;
all be altered at the same time.
they must
4. Similarly, there is a legal problem about the
Governor's powers to administer the New Territories.
Doubts about this could undermine the value of removing
the 1997 date from the leases.
Under present British law
it might be argued that the Governor's powers of
administration in the New Territories end in 1997. We
therefore intend also to remove this purely legal obstacle.
This would remove any legal impediment under British law
to the continuation of the present administration in the
New Territories after 1997. But it would be purely
permissive. That is to say, its only effect would be to
permit such administration to continue under British law
if, at the time, the Chinese Government so wished. It
would not in any way prejudice what those wishes would be.
5. To deal with these two aspects of the problem it will
be necessary to pass a law on land leases in Hong Kong and,
in support of that, issue an Order in Council. The latter
is a legal step which does not have to be submitted to
Parliament for approval. Our present intention is to
announce the steps we propose to take when the Governor
opens the Hong Kong Legislative Council in October.
doing so, we would naturally make it clear that these
steps were entirely without prejudice to the Chinese
position on Hong Kong, and did not commit either the
/present
In
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