CONFIDENTIAL
370/8
6 SEP 1997
по
From: The Legal Adviser
Date: 19 August 1993
CC:
Sir J Coles Miss S Brooks Mr Chamberlain
o/r
local
withou
Mr Ricketts
Hong Kong Department
HONG KONG COURT OF FINAL APPEAL (CFA)
Officer
1. Mr Edwards, the Hong Kong Law Adviser, told me in conversation last week that this issue was new on the move again. My understanding was that the Governor had now been persuaded of the need to take the project forward, and in his characteristic way wanted to move with all speed.
2.
I do not know whether you have had any reports on the subject. So far as I personally am concerned, I do not think I have seen anything since my own visit to Hong Kong last summer. I must however underline the vital importance of our being given the maximum possible notice if Hong Kong intend to proceed with a legal ordinance setting up the CFA. The reason is, as you will remember, that the CFA cannot be made effective a piece of primary legislation over here. Although this would be short and simple, it will still be the devil's own job to get it into the legislative programme if the parliamentary managers have the slightest fear that it will open the door to contentious parliamentary debate about the Hong Kong constitution, and virtually impossible to get it into the programme at short notice. Hong Kong must not therefore be allowed to harbour the thought that, having turned the tap off in the past, all they now have to do is turn it on again.
3.
While I minute, I assume that the earlier plan (based on discussions between the Governor and the Lord Chancellor and between Sir J Coles and Sir T Legg) to recruit supplementary judges from the UK ran into the sand. If so, it may have been because it became impossible to offer at that stage any onward ticket to an eventual CFA, even though my view was that the proposal was both important enough and attractive enough to be pursued simply as a means of reinforcing the Hong Kong Court of Appeal. At all events I should be glad to be reminded where the matter stands.
F D Berman
CONFIDENTIAL