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One should never ever be complacent about things like crime statistics because for somebody who's just been mugged or for somebody who's been sexually assaulted or for somebody whose shop has been broken into or whose flat has been robbed. for somebody in those sort of situations the only statistic that matters is the terrible personal tragedy which they've just suffered. But putting that on one side, the statistics in Hong Kong, given what is happening in the rest of the world, are astonishing. And they say a good deal about this community and its values. I doubt there can be more than a handful of other places in the world which can actually point to violent crime figures falling. I doubt that there are many places which can point to detection rates rising. People often say when they're talking about Asia, one of the great things about Singapore is that crime is so low in Singapore. Crime is lower in Hong Kong than it is in Singapore. That's what the latest Interpol statistics tell us. We have far more policemen per number of population than most other comparable communities and we intend to keep things that way. All those things help to ensure that Hong Kong remains a place where people want to live and want to do business.
I think there are three things dealing with the specific issues that the Honourable lady made. Three things that we have to try to ensure between now and 1997.
First, that we don't do anything ourselves which undermines the rule of law. Honourable Members will know, and I won't go over the arguments again, the connections which I've always drawn and I think which the Honourable lady would draw, between the role of a Legislature cleanly elected and the rule of law, but that is just one aspect of the issue. I think we have to be absolutely determined that we don't do anything which allows the way we do business in Government to be less clean, that we do nothing which allows corruption to ooze into our way of life as though it was some natural and acceptable phenomenon, it's not. Start to think that a little bit of corruption is all right, that it's somehow culturally the regional way of doing things, allow any of that to start to happen and Hong Kong and other communities will very very rapidly become a great deal less successful than they have been. So first of all we have to stand foursquare behind the rule of law.
Secondly, we do have, and the Honourable lady is entirely right to hound the Administration on this issue, we do have to clear up the statute book and to make sure that some antiquated laws which we would never dream of using today, that some antiquated laws which aren't in line with the Bill of Rights, are dealt with before 1997. I'm sure that others would want to deal with them otherwise after 1997, as unfortunate relics of colonialism. I don't want things that aren't in agreement with the Bill of Rights to still be hanging around for longer than they should. That affects a number of issues, it affects freedom of speech which the Honourable lady was questioning Administration officials about the other day, it affects other matters too. The Public Order Ordinance which the Council is at present considering is a good example of an area where one needs to make sure that legislation is brought into line with contemporary practice in a way which enhances rather than reduces the real authority and responsibility and powers of the Police Force.