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The Bill also meets the public demand for greater access to legal aid. Clauses 4 and 13 expand the scope of the standard civil legal aid scheme. As a matter of human rights policy, we propose to give the Director of Legal Aid the discretion to waive the means test in any civil case where an applicant has a meritorious Bill of Rights claim. We also propose that legal aid be extended to persons making applications to the Mental Health Review Tribunal against their detention in a mental hospital or the Correctional Services Department Psychiatric Centre, and to persons who pursue election petitions on Bill of Rights grounds.
Clause 14 of the Bill seeks to include in the scope of the Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme claims involving professional negligence on the part of medical doctors, dentists and lawyers.
Finally, the opportunity is also taken to streamline some operating practices. For example, Clause & seeks to clarify the application of a first charge by the Director of Legal Aid on any property recovered or preserved for an aided person in proceedings in respect of which the person was legally aided. It also recognises the present practice whereby the Director does not impose a first charge on maintenance payments to children. The existing privileges against disclosing information in connection with a legal aid application are clarified in Clause 9 of the Bill.
End/Wednesday, January 25, 1995
Civil Service Pension Reserve Fund
Following is the speech by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Michael Sze, in moving the motion to establish a Civil Service Pension Reserve Fund in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I move the resolution standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The resolution seeks to establish a Civil Service Pension Reserve Fund under Section 29 of the Public Finance Ordinance.
The Fund would be used exclusively for the payment of Civil Service pensions in the most unlikely event that the Government were unable to meet its pension commitments from General Revenue. The principal purpose in establishing the Fund would be to address a general concern among civil servants about the security of their pensions. To this extent it would complement the existing statutory provisions in the pensions legislation and reinforce guarantees in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.