REPORT
ON THE WORK OF THE
HONG KONG GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT OFFICE
by
THE RT. HON. SIR PATRICK NAIRNE, GCB, MC, MA,
and
THE HON. MR. JUSTICE SIMON LI FOOK-SEAN
Introduction
1. On 18 July 1984, in a Written Parliamentary Answer, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs announced the proposal to appoint a small independent team (the Monitoring Team) to monitor the work of the Assessment Office. The Answer explained that it was planned to set up the Office, under the authority of the Governor of Hong Kong, to collate and assess the views of the people of Hong Kong on what- ever agreement was reached with the Chinese Government on the future. of the territory. The terms of reference of the Monitoring Team are set out in Annex I.
2. We were appointed as the members of the Monitoring Team. We were accommodated in offices in the Supreme Court Building in Hong Kong at a convenient distance from the offices of the Assessment Office under the Commissioner, Mr. I. F. C. Macpherson, in another part of the same building. The Hong Kong Government provided one Senior Executive Officer, Mrs. Carrie Willis, and one Senior Personal Secretary, Miss Alice Chu, as our staff. We wish to record our appreciation of their efficient support.
3. We began work on Thursday, 27 September 1984, the day after the terms of the draft agreement on the future of Hong Kong had been announced and published in a White Paper, which refers in paragraph 32 to the Monitoring Team.
The Monitoring Rôle
4. Our terms of reference required us "to observe the work of the Assessment Office in all its aspects" and to answer four specific questions :-
(a) Has the Assessment Office "discharged its duties" properly?
(b) Has it discharged them accurately?
(c) Has it discharged them impartially?
(d) In discharging its duties, has it faithfully followed the procedures
presented in its terms of reference?
5. To some extent those questions overlap each other; we approached them as follows :—
(a) If the Assessment Office was to discharge its duties properly, it had not only to perform them accurately and impartially, but also to carry them out with the maximum efficiency on the basis of faithfully applied procedures. We needed to be satisfied, therefore, that the Assessment
78