25 May 1993
(By Fax)
Miss Annie Tam
Administration Wing Government Secretariat Lower Albert Road Hong Kong
CONFIDENTIAL
2702652
JUDICIAL OFFICERS (TENURE OF OFFICE) BILL: PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE LETTERS PATENT AND ROYAL INSTRUCTIONS
Thank you for your letter of 6 May to my predecessor, Miss Williams.
Our Legal Adviser is currently studying the proposed amendments to the Letters Patent and Colonial Regulations in relation to the latest version of the Bill and we will let you have her views in due course. We are aiming to submit the amendments to the Letters Patent to the 20 July Privy Council. In order to do this, we will need to have finalised the draft amendments with you by 7 July in order to give us time to submit at our end. The Letters Patent usually come into operation upon the date of their publication in the
HKG Gazette.
The amendments to the Colonial Regulations will need to be submitted to the Secretary of State. We are currently undertaking an exercise to reprint the Colonial Regulations as the 1977 version is very out of date. We would therefore like to include the amendments to CR54 (6) and 65 in the re-printed version. However, it is likely that we will be undertaking this exercise before 20 July. I would be grateful to know, therefore, whether you would see any difficulty with us obtaining the Secretary of State's approval for the amendments to the Colonial Regulations before the amendments to the Letters Patent are in force.
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CONFIDENTIAL