布政司署
香港下亞畢道
本署檔號 Our Ref: CAB D4
來函檔號 YOUR REF:
Ms. Pamela Major,
CONFIDENTIAL
HKC370/13
By Bag
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
22 April 1991
2
Hong Kong Department,
Foreign and Commonwealth office,
London SW1A 2AH
કાર્યું કે
Але
Minute to
Legal Advisers
PM7/5 Sher
fa for 1016
Dear Pamela,
Crown Proceedings Ordinance
о
In my letter to you of 10 April 1991, I said we would revert to you about about Our proposals to Ordinance.
As far as the concerned, the matter can be
(a)
(b)
consultation with the Chinese amend the Crown Proceedings
question of consultation is summarised as follows.
The proposal has two aims
to enable Hong Kong residents to sue the Crown/UK (including UK agencies and the British forces) in Hong Kong; and
to enable members of the British Forces in Hong Kong to sue the Crown/UK in HK.
As regards object (a), the Chinese would no doubt be intensely suspicious of any move to make the Crown/UK suable in Hong Kong.
То them there could be only one interpretation: that we have carefully kept immunity for ourselves for all these years, and now, with 6 more to run, we propose to give it up in order to make the new sovereign power subject to the jurisdiction of the local courts in circumstances where the old sovereign was not. It would be of no avail
to explain to them that the proposal does not concern the issue of sovereignty: that the immunity from being sued by its subjects asserted by the Crown as sovereign was steadily eroded from the fourteenth century and today except in respect of the sovereign personally which does not concern us here is negligible; and that the immunity of the Crown/UK from suit in the courts of Hong Kong derives not from an assertion of
on,
CONFIDENTIAL