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Legislative Council is also desirable, to enable it to
deal with the increasing sophistication of Government and
with the extra-legislative duties of Unofficial members.
Clearly the appointment of representatives emerging
from the lower income groups will require the payment
of allowances to Unofficial members of the Legislative
and Executive Councils. The existing translation,
secretarial and research staff of the Office of the
Unofficial members of the Executive and Legislative
Councils will also need to be strengthened.
In due
course it might be desirable to appoint Unofficial
"Members" drawn from the Executive Council, but answerable
in the Legislative Council for particular fields of
policy in the same way that Official members are at
present. In these ways the Legislative Council can be
made more representative and less alien and more responsive
But even after substantial change along the
29.
lines proposed above the Executive and legislative
Councils will be neither democratic nor directly answerable
to an electorate, and their composition will not satisfy
critics unable appreciate the "Chinese dimension" or
accept the absence of normal progress towards democratic
institutions. Moreover if these institutional changes
were over-dramatised in an attempt to pacify UK critics
we would risk misleading the Chinese into reading too
much into them. If carefully handled these institutional
Page 42hanges will be bea42940 to social cohesing42M6203 Kong