2) PERSUNAL
chat Legco was only an advisory body? Yang Youyong said that this was what the Letters Patent said. I pointed out that UK Acts of Parliament were couched in similar terms to the Hong Kong Letters Patent and yet no one would say that Parliament was only an advisory body. I showed Chen and Yang the Hong Kong Act of 1985 as an example, and the words at the beginning which read:
"Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,
The Letters Patent stated that the Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council, might make laws. Chen and Yang appeared surprised at this parallelism. They sought to argue that Parliament and Legco were very different creatures. I said that the relationship between the Queen and Parliament on the one hand and the Governor and Legco on the other, insofar as the making of laws were concerned, was fairly similar. Indeed a corollory of this constitutional position was that the Governor could not make laws without the advice and consent of Legco. It was certainly wrong therefore to describe Legco as simply advisory and it would be much better if these remarks were not repeated.
4.
Chen Rongchun himself raised Martin Lee's position in 1997 and argued that it was entirely appropriate for the NPC to declare, if it saw fit, that he would not be able to ride the through train. I said that, as I understood the Basic Law, it was for the Preparatory Committee in 1996 to decide who could or could not ride the through train.
CONFIDENTIAL