CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 7

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SPARES TO LIBRA 4 to af List (FD)

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12-5-41 1-9.41

I have no read the report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Immigration Department and also the voluminous transcripts of evidence as taken in open court. The evidence taken in camera has for some reason not been forwarded to us. I have also sent a copy of the Governor's despatch and of the report of the Commission to the Foreign Office, who asked that they might have it on record in case any question affecting relations with China arose out of it.

In point of fact the report, although it makes one reference to the Secretary of State's instructions that the Immigration Ordinance should be administered sympathetically as far as the Chinese are concerned, is almost entirely domestic in its substance. The Commission of Enquiry was headed by the Chief Justice, Sir Atholl MacGregor, and the other members were one Chinese and two representatives of the European business community. There is no doubt that the report is a slashing attack not only on Mr. Forrest, but on the Hong Kong Administration as a whole. We have had previous information from Sir Geoffry Northcote to the effect that the Chief Justice himself was supposed to be personally responsible for the greater part of the drafting of the report and for much of the strong language in which it is drawn up.

The greater part of the Governor's despatch deals with the position of Mr. Forrest, which has already been solved as a result of his retirement, and in this minute I propose to concentrate rather on two other aspects of more permanent significance revealed in the report. The first of these is the light the report throws on the Hong Kong Administration. This affair of the Immigration. Department is not the first instance that we have seen of the inability of the Hong Kong Civil Service to re-adjust itself to war-time conditions, and the recent petition received from Mr. Kennedy Skipton on incidents arising out of his tenure of office in the Food Control Department revealed a state of affairs much the same as that shown in this despatch. One must make allowances for the fact that there is a very small reserve of suitable man-power on which an expanded Civil Service in Hong Kong can draw. But that in itself, as Sir Geoffry Northcote says, is a reason why the peace-time routine of minute and counter-minute should be replaced by some more speedy method of dealing .with problems that arise. It is difficult, I think, in reading the report and the evidence, not to feel some sympathy with Mr. Forrest in his attempts to get his Department running since the Colonial Secretariat seem to have entered very lightheartedly into the introduction of the Immigration Ordinance which affected so many of the people of Hong Kong. It is true that the Department got away to a bad start since the public misunderstood the whole tenor of the Immigration Ordinance, but at the same time it is difficult to see why steps were not taken to relieve Mr. Forrest of his duties as Postmaster General at an earlier date. He held this post in conjunction with that of Immigration Officer for some time. We have had complaints from the military authorities of the way in which the Hong Kong Administration is going about its work in war-time, and in this connection I was interested to read in the reports of the Commission's hearings that the Director of Medical Services who

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