CO129-616-6 Hotels Ordinance- 1949 21-2-1949 - 21-2-1949 — Page 168

34

Hong Hansard

Report of Romy. Co. west in

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

16718

1

9d 706.1949

HOTELS BILL, 1949.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL moved the First reading of a Bill intituled "An Ordinance to make provision for the control of accom- modation provided by and charges made by hotels.' He said: Sir, it will be recalled that in August last year, Your Excellency appointed a Committee to enquire into and advise Government concerning the rates to be charged in Hotels. This Committee, after considerable deliberation and work, reported and a copy of that Report has been laid before this Council. The Bill which is now before Council for First reading has two main objectives.

Firstly, it seeks to provide ordinary legislation to enable where necessary measures of control to be imposed in respect of accommo- dation and charges made by hotels, and to do this by way of legislation by ordinance, rather than by perpetuation of the method of control by use of Defence Regulations. Thus this legislation will meet the desire which has often been expressed in this Council that in time of peace the law of the Colony should be the law as enacted by this Council and should not be law enacted by defence or emergency regulations.

The second objective is to enable control by way of enforcing a reservation of accommodation in hotels. Such form of control could not, in fact, have been imposed by way of defence regulations.

Sir, it will be seen that the Bill before Council is, in the main, an enabling measure to enable regulations to be made under it. It will be seen that by clause 4 power is given to the Quartering Authority to make regulations and to make regulations on the matters enumerated in that clause. A safeguard is, however, included in that any regulations so made will require to be submitted to the Governor and would not be enforced until approved by resolution of this Council.

As I have indicated, the main incentive to this legislation has been afforded by the Report of the Committee to which I have referred and it is obvious that it is necessary that regulations should be made to conform with the recommendations of that Report sooner rather than later. Thus it will be observed that Regulations have, in fact, been drafted and appear as a Schedule to this Bill. Thus it will happen that upon enactment of this Bill regulations will also have been made.

The main recommendations of the Committee's Report were that percentages of accommodation as set out in the Report should be reserved in hotels named in the Report, such reservation to be in the interests of resident guests." Secondly, that the charges for accommodation so reserved shall be restricted to the amounts men- tioned respectively in the Report. Thirdly, that electricity charges other than for electricity supplied for lighting purposes shall be controlled to the extent of the charges again named in the Report.

Accordingly the Regulations give effect to such recommendations; the Regulations, I mean, as they appear as a Schedule to the Bill. It will be seen that in so doing, however, there has been one departure