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Immigration is a matter which falls to the SAR Government within the terms of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, so it will be for the Immigration Department of the SAR Government to determine policy and frontier controls and I cannot conceive of circumstances, I repeat, in which the Immigration Department of an SAR which was operating within the Basic Law and applying the rule of law, denied returnability to people with valid travel documents.
Dr John Tse Wing-ling (in Chinese): Mr President, a question in relation to the disabled and employment. I've always been very concerned about this issue. I've said here before that the number employed by this Government is not really that many. We have over 200,000 and now the total employed is only 34 and mentally, mentally handicapped that it, only employ 34.
Now when you talk about employment for the disabled, you want to educate the employers and in the UK and in Japan they use a percentage and they talk about positive discrimination. That is, well certain sizes of a company will have to employ a certain percentage of the disabled. And so will that sort of legislation be put in place in Hong Kong?
Governor: I think the honourable member isn't strictly correct about the position in the UK, though it is sometime since I've been there, but I don't think that's a completely accurate reflection of the position in the UK but I think that he has described the position in Japan.
I'm not, I have to say, very much in favour of statutory quotas which I think give employers or some employers the impression that somehow their doing something which isn't in their interest. I think we have to get employers to understand that employing people with a disability is in their interest and we have to make sure that there are other services available in society like better transport for the disabled which make it possible for people with a disability, having got a job, to get to it.
In Government I realise that we must go further. We have made substantial progress in the last couple of years, since we began these summit meetings. We intend to continue to make progress. We recognise that we have to give a lead but we hope, as well, that some of those who lecture us on doing better, like the media, will themselves do better and employ more people with a disability.
Dr John Tse Wing-ling (in Chinese): Mr President, well I don't believe the Governor would like to talk about the UK and the Governor doesn't want to talk about that. I do know about UK legislation and they want the companies to have 2% of their people disabled, but usually it's about one point something per cent, in other words the legislation is not really adhered to.