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But here we had something which raises another fundamental point. Our existing mechanisms for dealing with labour relations issues. We have a Labour Advisory Board which had proposed generous, more generous terms for severance and long term pay. A Board which brings together elected representatives of labour and of employers. I don't think that it would have been right simply to throw over their advice.
You say as the former chairman of a party, can I imagine that sort of thing happening elsewhere? To which the simple answer is: Yes I can.
If, in the United Kingdom, in a labour dispute, the advisory committee, ACAS, proposed a way of settling it agreeable to both sides which involved legislative provisions and during the committee stage of the bill those provisions were changed in the house of commons, I think it would be perfectly natural for the government to refuse to go ahead with the bill and to go back to the employers and employees and try to resolve the issue. That's what we are trying to do. We don't want to destroy labour relations machinery which has worked for Hong Kong extremely well down the years. We want to try to find some acceptable accommodation. In taking the measure we did in withdrawing the bill, we didn't invent some new procedure. We followed the agreed procedures of the Legislative Council.
But, finally, would there have been a better way of resolving the issue? Yes, there would have been. I wish we had won the vote. I wish we had been able to carry the Legislative Council with us. But we'll have to try to persuade them again, after having discussed the matter with the Labour Advisory Board on the basis of the debate and the discussion in the Legislative Council.
My official have dealt with this matter wholly reasonably. They have my full support. But like them, I hope that we can resolve it without further argument and like them, I'm sure, I very much hope Mr Lau Chin-shek will return to the Legislative Council because it will be the poorer without him.
End/Thursday, December 15, 1994