1
布政司署
香港下
畢道
* OUR REF CAB D4
来函藏號 YOUR REF
Ms. Pamela Major,
Hong Kong Department,
Foreign and Commonwealth office,
London SW1A 2AH
By
Dag
"?
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG HOA
22 April 1991
Dow Pamster,
Crown Proceedings Ordinance
In my letter to you of 10 April 1991, I said we revert to you about
Our proposals
would
about
Ordinance.
AS
far
as
to
consultation with the Chinese amend the Crown Proceedings
the question of consultation is concerned, the matter can be summarised as follows.
(a)
(b)
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 af 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.
TO 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 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