Mr Stone, HKD
18
124/1
HKC
1 1 SEP 1990
From:
Paul Fifoot
Legal Advisers
Date:
5 September 1990
CC Ms Barrett
16
HONG KONG TELNO 2654: COPYRIGHT (TAIWAN) ORDER 1990
1.
Mr Waterworth is away. I do not know, nor could I expect Mr Waterworth to know, whether the Taiwanese have approached HMG. If they had done so, I would have advised that we followed the procedure set out in paragraph 5.3.1 of DSP Consular Volume 3, which says that when requested to give statements of English law for the information of foreign governments, such requests will, as a rule, be acceded to unless the burden of so doing is excessive.
2. I do, of course, understand the proposition by the Hong Kong Attorney General's Chambers that governments' legal advisers do not give legal advice to private persons. We have the same rule in paragraph 3.5.1 of DSP Consular Volume 5, Part 2. But explaining, in general terms, what the law is for a foreign administration when the object is to provide material for a reciprocal arrangement of benefit to the economy or relations between countries is a rather different matter. Further, one must have the most profound sympathy with the Taiwanese, and anyone else, who attempts to discover what the law is from a referential application of the law as it is included in S.I.1990 No 588, which itself amends S.I.1972 No 1724 and S.I.1979 No 912. I think we should try to encourage the Hong Kong Government to make a general statement of the purposes of the Orders and the way in which we have attempted to carry out those purposes.
4 PFAAZ
Paul Fifoot