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understood from its publication in the Press on Sunday, is that these are our proposals which are now being put to Government. They are not yet fact. I hope that they will be fact very soon. I hope that Government will not delay and fall asleep while reading this Report, or in fact that it can wake up sufficiently to read it. I think that there are three very pertinent things in the Report. First of all, as Mrs. ELLIOTT has said, the franchise. With 34,000 people out of 4 million people having the right to vote, this makes a mockery of any enlargement of the scope of local Government in Hong Kong, and I do think that one of the earliest things that must be done is to enlarge the franchise. It has been suggested, and I go along with the suggestion, that this should be done on a residential basis, that those people who have been resident in Hong Kong for five years and who are over the age of 21, should have the right to vote.
The second point which is almost as important is the finance. It has been mentioned in the Budget Debate that the Urban Council should have its own finance. It was mentioned in the Budget Debate in 1966 that there should be reforms in local Government. I hope it will not be 1973 before the Urban Council has its own finance, because without its own finance, it cannot carry out the reforms that it wants to.
The third thing is social welfare which is to come under this Council, if this Report is accepted, in Phase I of the Report. I think this is terribly essential because we have been told in the Budget address that they hoped to increase public assistance. Mr. BERNACCHI, earlier on this afternoon, spoke about our work in the ward offices, and one of the things that I have learned from my work in the ward office is that people dislike having to go and ask for charity. It does something to a man's dignity, to a man's self-respect if he has to go and ask for public assistance. In a modern community such as we have here in Hong Kong to-day, I think this is utterly wrong. We should have, and I repeat it again, I have said it for four years in the Annual Debate, a proper form of scaled income tax, income tax from which public assistance in another form can be given, in the form of a social security. People who have contributed will then feel they have the right to old age pension, the right to a widow's pension, the right to sickness benefit. They do not have to go and ask the Social Welfare Department for a fixed pitch newspaper licence. We already have, heaven knows, a hawker problem on our hands. All the streets in the town are cluttered with hawkers, and yet our Social Welfare Department keeps on handing out more and more fixed pitch hawkers licences to those people who are really in need of some form of social security. I think this is one of the most important aspects. I hope that we can see this in the care of the Urban Council in the first phase. I hope that this Report will be accepted by Government. I support it very much.
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MR. SALES: Mr. Chairman, does the Director of Social Welfare wish to reply to Dr. BELL before I speak?
DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL WELFARE: No, thank you.
MR. SALES: --Sir, it is almost three years to a day since the Urban Council passed a motion to set up an Ad Hoc Committee to consider the expansion of the Council and its future scope. In double quick time that Ad Hoc Committee produced the first report which was handed to the Secretary of State when he visited Hong Kong in 1966. Subsequently, this Council set up a Select Committee on Local Administration and the sub-committees to go into the various suggestions that were made. It is a remarkable achievement that on both occasions the Urban Council reached a degree of unanimity on its recommendations. Sir, that, if nothing else, shows that Unofficial Members of the Urban Council are in earnest about the need to render even greater service to the public by an expansion of the Council's facilities to do so, and also by bringing into public attention the service which the Councillors are able to render for the good of the people.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. BERNACCHI may be forgiven on the eve of election for making a rather bold statement about how the second report was drawn up in spite of the Appointed Members and I think Mr. BERNACCHI even suggested that the report might have been more progressive had it not been for the Appointed Members. That, Sir, is a travesty of the truth. In point of fact, Mr. Chairman, if this Council is able to consider a report at all, it is because of the work of the Appointed Members. First, in reconciling the divergent opinions of the Elected Members; these opinions are known to the public, particularly through their television appearances. Secondly, time being of the essence, the Select Committee had to work, on the double so to speak, and it was indeed, Sir, most difficult when one Elected Member had the habit of arriving late and leaving early from meetings. He gave an example of that at this meeting to-day, (laughter) and the other Elected Member on a very vague point of principle went on strike at a very crucial time in the Select Committee's work.
So, Sir, we have come to the point when this Report is presented to the Council in public to-day. The work of the Urban Council is not over. The Urban Council through its Select Committee, and such sub-committees as may be set up in the future, should now consider its recommendations on a functional basis. We have considered our recommendations on a political basis with a suggestion for the expansion of the services of the Council. Now we should go and take each function in turn which is suggested for the new Council and consider that in great detail. That is a thought which I would like to leave with my colleagues as this Report is presented to the Council to-day and to the public in Hong Kong.
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