COPY
Mr. Poskin
54384/44
155
Regulations may be made by the "uertering Authority". They have effect after approval by Leg. Co. The regulations in the schedule to the Ordinance were not made by the quartering Authority, and sub-section 3(b) or section 4 should have read "The regulations in the Schedule hereto shall be deemed to have been made under the provisions of this section".
This is not a mejor defect and I am of opinion that the regula tions have force of law,
2. There is a more serious defect in section 7(u).
The first part or this peragraph makes it an offence for any person to provide or agree to provide etc. any accommodation or service in relation to a hotel except for the use and at the cherzes sanctioned by or under this Ordinance... The Ordinance itself does not prescribe uses and charges, and the regulations (which form part of the Ordinance; deal only with accommodation and charges reserved for or payable by a particular class, numely, "Hong Kong residents". This means that e hotel manager who provides accommodation for a "non-resident" person would be guilty of an offence. Such, of course, cannot have been the intention and the wording of the paragraph will have to be altered.
3. On the face of it, the Ordinance does not discriminste between Juropeans and non-uropeans, ani, from the legal angle, it does not call for the exercise of the power or disallowance.
4. It cannot be denied, however, that the object of the Ordinence is unusual and that the methods adopted to attain that object are rather peculiar.
The object is to reserve a number of rooms in the local hotels for persone declared by the "uartering uthority" to be "Hong Kong residente", and to control the hotel charges payable by such residents.
In other words, the Ordinance siforda en indirect method of requisitioning accommodation.
Of those 24, two
Out of 91 hotels, 24 have been chosen. ere completely "requisitioned", six have 90 or their accommodation "requisitioned", two are affected to the extent of 80,, two to the extent or 70, and the rest20.
5.
The task of choosing the hotels etc. wus perfomed by an Advisory Committee whose recommendations, suve one, were embodied in the Ordinance and regulations.
The petitioners complain (s) that the Govt. refused to include in the terms of reference the question whether control was necessary, (b) that the Comittee refused to carry out a
'quasi-judicial" inquiry in public, and (c) that their counsel was heard "exparte" for 45 minutes only.
It would perhaps have been more satisiactory if the petitioners & other interested parties had been allowed to take a more active part in the proceedings of the dvisory Committee and had been given the opportunity of combating the arguments put forward by the Hotels Residente Association. The outcom® would possibly have been the some but the method would have been more likely to foster the feeling that justice had been done.
6
For the time being, the real grievance is that prices are
/ controlled