XN000022-1994-12-05 — Page 10

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Transcript of Chief Secretary's media session

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The following is a transcript of the media session by the Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan, after her luncheon address to the Swiss Business Council this (Monday) afternoon:-

Mrs Chan: Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, I've just come from addressing the Swiss Business Council on what I believe to be an important speech and I was very glad of chatting with those sitting at the head table to find that the topics that I covered in my speech, in fact, reflected the concerns of the Swiss businessmen here in Hong Kong. I was told that there will be a delegation of representatives of international chambers of commerce who will be going up to China next Monday and Tuesday. They will be meeting with Chinese leaders and will be reflecting to Chinese leaders their concerns. Of course, essentially, what they are interested in knowing is can they continue to do business in Hong Kong. In my speech, I drew attention to what I believe to be the three key ingredients for Hong Kong's success and why international businessmen are interested in doing business here. Those three elements are first, the rule of law, a clean, efficient civil service and operating a level playing field and we must make sure that we maintain these valuable elements. Now, underlying these vital elements particularly that of the rule of law, we have some important decisions to make. Specifically, we need to decide on the way forward for the Court of Final Appeal. We welcome the Law Society Council's endorsement of the bill to establish the Court of Final Appeal. I understand that some members of the legal profession have reservations about the bill and, of course, we respect their reservations but we do have a decision to make. In our view, we have an agreement with the Chinese which we reached in 1991. It provides for a good Court of Final Appeal. We need to set up this Court of Final Appeal as quickly as possible and it is our intention to put the draft bill before the Legislative Council early next year.

Question: Mrs Chan, if the JLG fails to reach an agreement on the Court of Final Appeal Bill next week, will the Government be prepared to table the legislation ......?

Mrs Chan: I don't think there is any question of failing to reach an agreement. We already have an agreement with the Chinese on the setting up of the Court of Final Appeal. We have a bill that reflects that agreement and there is no way in which we can depart from the agreement which we reached with the Chinese. What we are now awaiting is, first of all, comments from the legal profession and I very much hope that the legal profession as a whole will see fit to endorse the bill. If they have any suggested amendments to the bill, we would be happy to consider them. But I repeat again. We cannot agree to any amendments that would place us in breach of the 1991 agreement. We are also waiting for Chinese comments on the draft bill and we hope very much that they will let us have these comments as soon as possible.

end/Monday, December 5, 1994

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