CO129-616-6 Hotels Ordinance- 1949 21-2-1949 - 21-2-1949 — Page 65

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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

are inevitable I want to see them reduced to a minimum. Yet, 1 find myself partly responsible for a Bill which seeks to deprive the hotel owner of his right to charge what the business will bear. It is a bill which admittedly discriminates between one set of hotels and another and it contains some regulations which will not be too easy to apply. But for all that I support the Bill. It puts into effect what the Advisory Committee recommended and in such details as the definition of a Hong Kong resident and the substitution of weekly for daily rates it improves upon the recommendations. I should like to have seen a Board of Review or Board of Appeal set up as sug- gested not only in our Report but also in the Report of the Gillespie Committee which went into the Hotel question when these establish- ments were being derequisitioned in June, 1948. There is, of course, provision under Section 4(2) (a), for a dispute as to allocation to be referred to arbitration, but what we had in mind was a Board of Review to which disputes in regard to rates could be taken. I myself feel that the maximum rates in the fifth schedule may not necessarily be justified in all cases. Circumstances might arise which would result in serious loss to the Hotels if these rates are not capable of revision.

Only late yesterday afternoon I was furnished with the accounts of one of the Hotels which we have put into Group "B" in which undoubtedly on the present scale of rates it looks as though they will be running at a loss. That is a sort of case which might possibly have gone to the Board of Review. I understand, however, that the Government do not consider it a practicable measure on the grounds that it would encourage a flood of appeals, some of a trivial nature, and I therefore do not press the point.

If I might add a few observations I should like to say this. The hotel industry makes a valuable contribution to the economy of the Colony. It should not be subjected to a policy of pin pricks. There is no doubt that the transition period in 1946 was handled very well by the then Quartering Authority and that if it had not been for the tremendous rise in the wage bill most hotels would have been content to maintain the rates agreed upon when the hotels were derequisitioned. The steps taken in July, 1946, were most regret- table and have had very serious consequences. It is no good indulging in recrimination and we had better accept this bill as the best way out of a most unfortunate muddle. It seems to have been forgotten that a by no means negligible section of the community has suffered hardship through the great shortage of housing accommodation. I have not so much sympathy for those who have enjoyed the advant- ages of living in our leading hotels. Some of them I regard as leading a sheltered existence for there is no doubt that if they were exposed to the economic strain of house-keeping they would very soon realize that in some respects they are better off in a hotel. But, however much the hotel owners may protest that this bill is driving them to ruin the fact is that in many cases they have taken unfair advantage of those residents who have had no possibility of obtaining housing accommodation. It is all very well to argue that a mere 300 people

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