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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
imply that there is nothing to show for the large sum spent on salaries, but the salaries for the most part represent the cost of the civil administration and of the social services to which the Honourable Member refers. Take for example the legal departments the cost of which goes almost entirely in salaries-what are these but part of the cost of civil administration? Or take the Medical Department, the personal emoluments of which amount to roughly eleven out of sixteen lakhs of dollars, or the Education Department with fourteen lakhs for personal emoluments out of just under nineteen lakhs. What are these but two of the social services of the Colony? Does he include Roads under items of essential Public Expenditure? It has been asserted that under certain modern methods of road making 85 per cent. of the cost goes in wages.
The conclusion drawn by the Honourable Member from his premises is a complete non sequitur. A far better analysis of Public Expenditure is to be found in a publication entitled "An Economic Survey of the Colonial Empire (1932)" published by His Majesty's Stationery Office in 1934. The figures there given in respect of several Colonies are as follows:-
¡
H.K. F.M.S. Straits Kenya Nigeria Settlements
Administration
%
38.00 34.4
9%
%
CH
41.4 37.0 36.1
Economic development
9.7
12.0
13.7
20.7 9.1
Social Services
21.8
21.5 24.5 22.17 17.8
Defence
18.9
2.8 13.3
4.45 7.2
It will be seen that the cost of administration in Hong Kong is put at 38 per cent. as against 41.4 per cent. in the Straits Settlements, 37 per cent. in Kenya and 36.1 per cent. in Nigeria. Mr. Lo will of course object that the cost of administration should be computed by his method to include various other items, but this would apply alike to the computation in respect of these other Colonies. The Government's case is that the cost of administration in Hong Kong compares not unfavourably with that of other Colonies.
I suggest that it would be more profitable to abandon this fallacious distinction between salaries and other forms of expenditure and to consider the question of whether the taxpayer receives an adequate return for his expenditure as a whole, whether the Colony has undertaken services which it cannot afford and whether the services it provides could be provided more cheaply than at present without undue loss of efficiency. Now these are matters which the Government has always in mind. It believes that the taxpayer does receive an adequate return for his expenditure, the services it under-