警
here. I think it would be a very serious mis-statement of the fact indeed. I would be very surprised if the three MPs had
really intended to make such remarks so wide off the fact. But
I think it is useful to say this that there are 635 British
Members of Parliament, most of the are back benchers. They
have widely different opinions. They have widely different views.
They like expressing their views. And when MPs come here as back
benchers they do so quite freely. The three MPs who recently
came were speaking for themselves alone as far as I know. They
were certainly not speaking for the Government. They were on the
Labour side. They were not speaking for the Labour Party
leadership because the Labour Party leadership when it was in
power until the beginning of May of this year was pursuing policies
which were entirely at variance with the sort of things that the
recent three visitors were saying. So that I think one has to put
their remarks into perspective and recognise that they are speaking
simply as three individuals. They are not speaking, for example,
for the Anglo-Hong Kong Parliamentary Group which contains quite
a substantial number of Members of Parliament and the views of
most whose members would be quite different from those of the
three recent visitors.
Now I don't intend to give the impression that I think everything
in Hong Kong is perfect and obviously there are many things still
to be done, in the welfare field and the housing field and so on.
But I think that we have to keep a sense of proportion because if
you look at the problems that Hong Kong has faced, in 30 years
its population has multiplied 10 times. It's a very extraordinary
fact and I don't know where to find such parallel anywhere in the
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