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encourage the hawkers to trade in a fair way and that they should use their legal power of arrest and seizure of goods, etc., only as a last resort. I would also like to express my appreciation to Mr. Ross, our Executive Secretary, who devotes most of his time to resolving the hawker problem. By the request of the Hawker Select Committee we have a return of hawkers arrested and summonses taken out by the Urban Services Department, both licensed and unlicensed every 3 months. This return does show that a number of hawker summonses in the end cannot be served. I appreciate, therefore, why the Department do sometimes arrest the hawkers. But I still think that a distinction should be drawn between licensed hawkers and unlicensed hawkers. The licensed hawker has an address, and furthermore nowadays even the pedlars are, on the whole, at one particular spot. Unlicensed hawkers, however, are in an entirely different category. They either can get a licence and deliberately do not, or they are hawking prohibited foods including cooked food for which a licence is not issued. In some cases just recently, I queried why summonses dealing with failure to be inoculated against cholera were unable to be served. The answer came back "because the individuals concerned were unlicensed hawkers". In other words, they were selling cooked food in a manner which is a danger to the public. They ought to have been arrested, whereas many of the licensed hawkers who are arrested could easily have been summonsed. I would ask the Urban Council to take up this matter as a matter of urgent policy because it is not just a departmental matter. The freedom of the individual is always precious. It is not something to be left to the discretion of the Hawker Control constable, the health inspector or even the health officers. It is a matter of general policy that should be clearly laid down by the Urban Council and, in general, I would say that we have no alternative but to arrest the unlicensed hawkers, whereas the licensed hawkers should only be summonsed. Arresting should not and must not be made a form of "on the spot punishment".
Lastly on hawkers, I would like to take this opportunity to clear up an addition to the Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance that has come in for fire. The addition deals with scheduled foods for man, i.e. food that in most cases, is a health danger. In that case, and in that case only, it allows the Urban Council and/or the Commissioner of Police to confiscate the food before conviction subject to a power being given to the Magistrate to award compensation if the hawker is eventually acquitted. It does not make any difference to the obligation on the prosecution to prove their case. The Hawker Select Committee were consulted over this amendment and at one time it was considerably wider than it is now. I consider that with these limitations, it is for the protection of the public, and the only people that have cause to complain are the unlicensed hawkers, unlicensed either because they can get a licence but do not deliberately, or else unlicensed because they know that they are selling food for which they cannot get a licence. The Hawker Select Committee have been considering also the selling of live poultry in temporary markets, of which 2 have now already been established and other measures to ensure that the public is adequately supplied with foods on the scheduled list at reasonable prices but with adequate protection.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
I have commented that paragraph 15 is a code in itself, and I hope that the Hawker Select Committee and the Department will throughout this year abide by and take concrete steps to give effect to this code.
I have during the past year handed over my responsibility as first unofficial Chairman of the Resettlement Policy Select Committee to Dr. Alison BELL. Between Resettlement, Low Cost and Housing Authority, we have over a million people in Government aided housing accommodation, and this has really been done within the last 10 years, a terrific achievement for which the Urban Council is justified in taking full credit. 1 in 4 of the citizens of Hong Kong are now officially in Government aided housing. I think a considerable number more are in fact unofficially within this housing. Therefore, the 1st aim "to continue to institute measures designed to improve the integration of the residents into the general community" is very important. The 2nd is equally important "to review the policy and priorities for resettlement as laid down in the White Paper and suggest amendments". I think that anyone who was on the official Working Party of 1964 will agree that the powers and composition of the present Housing Board are far from what was contemplated then, and that amendments to that position are long overdue. The 3rd sub-paragraph is in fact the Sales' Formula which I enlarged upon last year and which has been accepted in principle by this Council, but has yet to be introduced. I believe that Dr. BELL will have more to say in her speech on that matter. As for other aims, surely it can be summed up by saying that it is essential to appreciate that the Resettlement Estates nowadays are towns in themselves, and they should have all the essentials and all the amenities of a town, including adequate educational facilities. The older estates perhaps in the centre of Kowloon could be integrated with their surrounding amenities, but that is not so for the newer, i.e. Tze Wan Shan, Kam Tin, Chai Wan, etc. Everyone including the Public Works Department has the essential obligation to make the Resettlement Estates capable of being self-contained. In that way, and only in that way, can we reach real integration of its residents. I think that the time is approaching when the name "Resettlement" should be given up in favour of a name more suitable.
Finally, on the Aims and Objects, I would repeat that the Reform Club support the Ad Hoc Committee's Report on the Future Scope and Operation of the Urban Council, and our support for the principle envisaged of a two-tier system of local Government. The Elected
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