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Question: Governor, what is your reaction to the judicial review this morning about civil servants serving on the Selection Committee?
Governor: We believe that the policy we have pursued is the right and sensible one. We think it has been striking a good balance between on the one hand allowing civil servants over the years to pursue their political interests, their interests as citizens, while on the other hand retaining the public's faith in the political neutrality of the civil service. We think that the arrangements that we had proposed as far as the Preparatory Committee and the Selection Committee were concerned were sensible arrangements and we are pleased that they have received a legal endorsement again today.
Question: Governor, I would like to ask you one question. There are a lot of employers claiming that the supplementary labour scheme is not really working and that they ask you to speed up the scheme. What do you think?
Governor: We think that it is early days. We think that the figures will look a lot more substantial over the coming weeks and months as the LAB process a large number of applications and the visas follow those applications. We have promised, as you know, a full scale review of the scheme when the figure of people using the scheme reaches 2,000 but in the meantime we will take account of all the proposals put to us by employers and employees. It is in everybody's interests that we have as effective and efficient a scheme as possible. We have had a number of particular proposals put to us by the Hong Kong employers and by others and we will be looking at them.
Question: Mr Patten, does that mean that you won't do anything as far as the importation of labour is concerned I mean the quota, the importation quota is concerned, the Government won't do anything until the review is carried out?
Governor: We are always in the position of wanting to improve our administrative arrangements if we can do so but there won't be a fundamental review of the scheme until we have reached the 2,000 figure. In the meantime we will make any improvements which seem to us to be sensible.
Question: Governor, you mentioned that the long term work of the Government, the Government's plan to tackle the unemployment situation is to put emphasis on the training and retraining side and we know that there are two consultation studies - on the VTC and ERB. Can you disclose something about the result and what will the Government specifically do to improve the training and retraining...?