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permission to hand funds to the District Boards. Now I therefore suggest that we appoint a small Working Party to look at my proposal and work out the details. Then they talk it over with the Chairmen of the Urban District Boards to see whether they are interested, and if they are interested, it could be put to the District Board members and our members for final approval.
The idea is to make the Urban District Boards financially autonomous under the umbrella of this Council.
The other problem we are facing is our relationship with the Secretary and Secretariat of Municipal Services, and the Regional Council. I believe we have established a very good preliminary relationship with the Provisional Regional Council but, of course, the actual Regional Council will only start functioning after the 1 April and may have very different membership just as our membership is liable to change after the 1 April. However, nothing that has happened so far has changed my mind about the error made by Government in establishing the Secretariat for Municipal Services. It has caused the U.S.D. considerable problems because manpower, and especially at senior level, has been shifted and not replaced. It causes us constant practical problems which I for instance experience as Chairman of the Food Hygiene Select Committee because, in fact, the Senior Management of our Health Inspectors are now part of the Secretariat and the interface creates even more than usual red tape.
It is obviously necessary to to have close cooperation between the two Regional Councils but this must be achieved via political cooperation between the two Councils and not as an attempted Government directive from on-high. The best possible method to achieve this is to abolish the Secretary for Municipal Services and his secretariat as quickly as possible and to establish a Committee of three senior members each from the Regional Council and this Council (Chairman, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Finance Committee) with D.N.T.S. and D.U.S. and one Crown Counsel as official members and I am quite sure that all problems which may arise because of conflicting policies dictated by differing circumstances, or because of standardization requirements, etc. etc. could be very quickly resolved. Cooperation is always a better method than attempted dictation.
Lastly, one small point: There have been considerable changes in the Legislative Council and I am sure that some of the new Councillors are interested in problems that are covered by the Regional and our Council. We have a long standing gentleman's agreement that we in this Council will not ask questions or talk about problems that concern LegCo and vice versa, but I think that this sort of agreement may not hold up in future and I would therefore suggest that LegCo members be allowed to ask questions in this Council. They could either do so in writing or if they so prefer ask them personally so that they could ask supplementaries as well. I think this would be a good way of avoiding any kind of conflict between the two Regional Councils and LegCo.
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I started this speech with a reference to the importance of putting Governmental systems right and I want to appeal here to those in charge of the 1987 Governmental Review, and to those who will be drafting the 1997 Basic Law, to make sure that in future red tape is kept to a minimum and that Governmental systems are kept simple so that they will be easy to maintain and cheap to run.
Sir, I support the motion.
ADJOURNMENT—4.58 p.m.
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese):--On 16 January 1986, i.e. Thursday, the remaining Urban Councillors will add their views. I call an end to today's meeting, we will resume our meeting on Thursday, 2.30 p.m.
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