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Question (in Chinese): Mr Governor, now I very much hoped that on employees retraining programme you would add in new elements. That is progressive interest loan fund to replace some of the CSSA payments so that for the unemployed they would get actual support and relief?
Governor: I think that's an extremely interesting proposal. A very interesting suggestion and of course one can think of welfare services systems, training systems elsewhere in the world which do precisely that. It's sometimes a subject of controversy, but I think it's a useful bridge to get people back into work.
Can I say this in addition. We have carried out a review of our overall training programmes and the VTC, as you may know, is responsible for training about 100,000 people every year, either part-time or full-time, and we're looking as well at the work of the retraining board. We haven't completed that review yet, but as soon as we
have completed it we'll go out to consultation as we are doing with the review on the training council. And in the course of that review I'll give you this undertaking that we'll look specifically at the proposal which you've put forward. Indeed if you'd like to leave your name with one of my colleagues in the Administration on the way out, we'll make sure that somebody talks to you in greater detail about your proposal so that in the review we can give it the attention which it deserves.
One other point. Training and retraining are a vital part of Hong Kong's future economic prospects. I think that increasingly a community's prosperity is going to be determined by the skill level and knowledge level in the country and we've got to move fast to make sure that we always improve and modernise our own training and retraining.
Question: Mr Patten, sir, I know that your mind must be focused on the next nine months in Hong Kong, but I would be very interested to ask you how your service in Hong Kong may have affected or influenced your own political outlook or your own philosophical outlook and what new ideas will you be taking back to UK with you in nine months' time?
Governor: Read my book! There was a crazy thing in a newspaper the other day which said that I was going to take six months leave from January 1997, in order to write a book. Well I might write a book one day, but it'll be after June 1997, rather than before.
To be serious and brief. There are three or four things which I will take away from Hong Kong with me which I think are extremely relevant to British and European politics.