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Governor's transcript
Following is the transcript of the media session by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, after opening the renovated Queen Mary Hospital this (Friday) afternoon:
Question: About the Budget. Does the Government give a copy to the Chinese side?
Governor: I think you'd better ask the Financial Secretary any questions about the Budget. We'll be doing what we always do with budgets or have done in the last few years. And as you know, we've kept the Chinese side fully informed about the process of budget making this year. We have to go further in the next financial year quite properly because the next budget will cover nine months after the change of sovereignty.
Question: What about the expenditure ...? Social welfare expenditure will get the largest increment...
Governor: I'm sure everybody in the community will be delighted by that because the community wants to see us providing good and comprehensive services for the needy, for the elderly, for the sake, for those with disabilities. So I'm sure that everybody will be delighted that welfare spending in real terms -- that is after inflation -- is going up in the coming year by almost 15 per cent.
Question: (on PM's visit)
Governor: My first priority will be to ensure that he is up to date about the challenges facing Hong Kong. Of course, I am in touch with him reasonably frequently, so what I say to him won't come as a great surprise. He wanted to come to Hong Kong for a couple of pretty obvious reasons. First of all, he's taking part at the moment in the Europe-Asia Summit Meeting in Bangkok and he believes as I do that Hong Kong is the major gateway to Asia for European Union countries, just as Britain in a sense is the main gateway to Europe for Asian countries. So Hong Kong has a really key part in the economic and trading relationship between Europe and Asia as it does between Asia and the United States. Secondly, I'm sure that he will want to make it clear to the people of Hong Kong, to legislators, to Executive Council members, to businessmen and to ordinary members of the public that he meets that Britain has a strong sense of commitment to Hong Kong not just up to 1997 but beyond that as well, morally and in other ways. And I'm sure he'll want to underline that.
Question: (on visa free access)