4
Commission were appointed and on 9 February 1979 the Commission held
its first full meeting.
14.
The Standing Commission has five important features to which
I should like to draw attention :
First, it is a local body and its nine Members are all long
term residents of Hong Kong.
Second, it is a permanent body with a permanent staff of its
own.
Third, to help ensure that the Commission's advice is
impartial, there are no civil service staff or management
representatives sitting as Members of the Commission.
Fourth, staff and management do however have equal rights
to be heard by the Commission.
Fifth, the Commission is required to keep all matters within
its terms of reference under continuing review, and to
recommend to the Governor any necessary changes.
15.
Soon after starting work the Commission decided that its
first report should deal with questions of underlying principle.
I quote now from paragraph 8 of the Commission's subsequent report:
"8. Before beginning our examination of key principles and
practices we were anxious to obtain the views of staff and
management. Thus our next step, on 14th February 1979, was
to call for representations. While not unnaturally many
staff were primarily concerned with individual grade issues,
over 130 representations had been received by the end of
March. These representations raised a number of issues on
which we believed staff and management should be further
consulted and accordingly we embodied the mujer points in a
/consultative
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