Registry No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret,
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
DRAFT
LETTER
To:-
Mr Francis Eddis
Francis Ville
6 Miles Tai Po Road
New Territories
HONG KONG
Type 1 +
From
DSR 11
PS/Mr Blaker Telephone No. Ext.
Department
Mr Blaker has asked me to thank you for your letter of 26 September, with which you enclosed two memoranda.
In the first of these papers you raised the question of compulsory purchases. The Hong Kong Government are well aware of the difficulties that sometimes arise over the resumption of land for Government projects. However, every effort is made to ensure that people who are forced leave their homes and businesses are fairly compensated. Apart from statutory compensation, ex gratia payments are often made when particular circumstances justify them. As a final recourse, those affected may present their cases to the Lands Tribunal. I am sure you will have noticed that in his speech at the Opening Session of the Legislative Council on 10 October, the Governor stressed that the Government would keep the whole system of compensation under review to ensure that it remains effective as circumstances change.
As regards your second memorandum, the "parity of subsidy" principle is designed to ensure that where the education provided for a particular sector of the community is more costly than the type of education provided for the majority, the additional costs should be borne not by the community as a whole but by those who benefit from the more specialised facilities provided. I can appreciate that, from
one point of view, this might be regarded as discrimination against non-Cantonese speakers. But a policy favouring English schools would have been open to much more serious criticism. The present policy was adopted on the advice of the
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Executive Council as the one which best accorded with the interests of the majority of the population.