XN000022-1994-12-07 — Page 3

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Government statement on Bar Council's comments on draft CFA Bill

A Government spokesman today (Wednesday) made the following statement on the Bar Council's comments on the draft Court of Final Appeal (CFA) Bill:

"The Government is disappointed that the Bar Council is proposing to its members that the CFA Bill be rejected, and hopes that members of the Bar will take the opportunity of their extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to take a different view.

"We are surprised and disappointed that the Bar Council gives so little consideration to the wider implications of its stance. The only result of rejecting the CFA Bill would be to ensure that Hong Kong has a judicial vacuum at the highest level, for possibly two to three years, until the Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government is able to set up the CFA. We cannot believe that members of the council really consider this to be in Hong Kong's best interests, nor that they believe that the CFA eventually set up by the SAR Government will provide greater flexibility than the 1991 agreement.

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"We are also surprised that the Bar Council should argue that the judicial vacuum that will occur if the CFA Bill is rejected is acceptable because the Privy Council hears only a relatively small number of Hong Kong cases. We cannot understand why any potential litigant should be deprived of the right of final appeal. And the Bar Council's emphasis on numbers overlooks completely the significance of these limited number of cases to the development of jurisprudence on matters of great public importance, and the detrimental effect that a judicial vacuum would have on international confidence in our judicial system.