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GUNHUENTIAL
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the Bill of Rights should "be entrenched in order to
make it paramount in the laws of Hong Kong".
4.
The purpose of announcements both in London and Hong Kong of the adoption of a Bill of Rights, impliedly one in the conventional entrenched form, was presumably to build confidence in Hong Kong and to have on our own terms a Bill of Rights which while consistent with the Joint Declaration and Basic Law, would provide effective protection of rights in Hong Kong now and in the future. HMG has affirmed on various occasions that the content of the Bill of Rights is a matter for Hong Kong, not
the PRC.
5.
I refer to these factors because of my concern that a Bill which is patently defective will, I fear, undermine rather than build confidence. Lack of proper entrenchment or justiciability would be a patent defect quickly detected and attacked by not only human rights specialists but other informed members of the public. By international standards it would appear a feeble response to a serious problem : not a few critics here and abroad will draw the conclusion that this is the measure of rights which the PRC will tolerate in Hong Kong, both after and even before 1997.
Drafting Efforts to date
6.
Responding to the ExCo directives members of my Chambers considered various possible methods of
entrenchment.
7.
The basic problem flows from the principle
of British constitutional law that a legislature cannot bind its successors. Nor can it abandon the power to
What Parliament legislate on a particular subject.
or a legislature enacts, it can subsequently amend or