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14:24
FROM
TECH FADJŲ
O FCO NEWS
PAGE.DEA
TRANSCRIPT B: BONG KONG SELECT COMMITTEE MEETING
22 MAR 89
3-
R
LAVRENCE:
Your answer, Foreign Secretary, is not all that clear to me.
I am not saying it is your fault. It may be that there is deliberate lack of clarity, but the question of whether the Hong Kong legal system should be paramount in the end was one of tremendous importance from the very start of the negotiations.
What would the situation be if the Standing Committee of the
People's Congress said that the Hong Kong law, say on a matter of
human rights or demxracy, is inconsistent with Chinese law and
therefore should not stand and the independent judicial power in
Hong Kong makes a final adjudication saying that it is not
luconsistent and should stand?
If the matter is referred,
then, to the Standing Committee how is the matter further
resolved?
In the end, is it the Chinese who decide what is the
ultimate resolution of any conflict between Chinese law and Hong
Kong law or is it the independent judiciary of Hong Kong which
decides?
That is the question and if you will forgive me saying 50,
the answer was not clear from what you told us.
FOREIGE SECRETARY:
I do not doubt that clarity can always be improved upon,
particularly when discussing matters of constitutional law and one has to come back to the provisious of Article 157, because that is
intended to provide for the Hong Kong courts to be supreme within
It is the Hong Kong the limits of the autonomy of the region.