3
5.
6.
7.
"Commonwealth war grave means a grave containing the remains of any officer, rating or other rank of the naval, military or air forces of His Majesty, who died in the war of 1914 to 1921 or in the war of 1939 to 1947 or of any other person accepted by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as falling within the terms of its founding Royal Charters.
11
(f) To deal with the other matters where I have not suggested specific
changes to the existing wording, the following formula may commend itself in the interests of simplicity, minimum disruption to existing provisions and minimum consequential renumbering in the event of future modifications to this legislation:
"The powers of the Authority under this Part shall not be exercised in respect of any Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery or any Commonwealth war grave without the consent of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission."
Again I cannot envisage that the Commission's consent would be withheld unreasonably and I would have no objection to such a provision being included in the legislation.
If so I
Am I right in thinking that the Commission would always be accepted as a "person" with a proper interest for the purposes of section 118 etc. would not advocate any changes to those relevant sections.
I should be grateful if you would also be so kind as to let me have your views on a further related aspect which is of current concern to the Commission. The sites of the Stanley Military Cemetery and the Sai Wan Cemetery were granted to the Commission, in perpetuity, by Deeds of Appropriation dated 29 January 1957 and 9 February 1953 (as amended 31 March 1977) respectively. There has been some discussion on the possibility of converting these Deeds of Appropriation to leases, but unfortunately it appears that all leases would be of limited duration and might require at some stage payment of a premium and certainly the payment of "commercial" rent. For these reasons the Commission would prefer to continue under the existing Deeds of Appropriation if this is possible, although I believe that some consideration may be given to converting automatically all Deeds of Appropriation into leases expiring in 2047. I appreciate that for some purposes 50 years may seem quite a long time, but more than 70 years have already passed since our responsibilities began and the Commission's Charters do place those responsibilities for war graves upon us in perpetuity. We therefore need to look at these matters in the rather longer term. In addition, in view of the nature of our work and the fact that we are publicly funded by way of annual contributions by our member governments, we do consider it is inappropriate that, having been given the land free of charge in perpetuity, we should at this stage be faced with the possibility of paying "commercial" rent. I believe that some consideration is being given to the possibility of a number of organisations being exempted from payment of "commercial" rents and certainly I would hope that the Commission would be included in this category if we should be faced with leases.
There is no doubt that the ideal solution from the Commission's point of view would be to be granted the equivalent of the freehold of our cemeteries either by statute, by continuation of the Deeds of Appropriation, or otherwise. I should be most grateful for your observations and any suggestions you may have