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Governor: I am prepared to follow this slightly archaic point with the Honourable Gentleman outside the Chamber, but I think what he is suggesting is that whereas for other functional constituencies it would still be necessary to be on the geographical roll in order to be a functional constituency voter, in the old corporate constituencies I think the Honourable Member is suggesting that people should automatically be on the functional constituency register if they were on it before. One of the problems is that some of those who were clearly on the Corporate Voting Register before, don't qualify, for other reasons, to vote in Hong Kong. I think that has turned out to be a problem in a number of those constituencies. I assure the Honourable Member that while we are always happy to learn and that goes, I know, for the BEC - they have tried very hard in those old functional constituencies, where the problem should inherently be less considerable than in the new functional constituencies. They have worked phones, they have written letters, they have contacted individual business organisations and individual LegCo Members. But it is interesting, at the end of the day we have found it easier to register 900,000 plus people in the new functional constituencies than to register a few thousand in the old Corporate Functional Constituencies, and that, I think, raises a number of exceptionally interesting questions.

Mr Ngai Shiu-kit: According to the official data the average registration rate of new functional constituencies is 40 per cent. That is far from the authorities' expectation. Is the Governor satisfied with this registration rate? Does the low registration rate mean that the election will lack representiveness?

Governor: Well, as I said a moment or two ago, any democrat like me would like to see 100 per cent registration and anything less than that is regrettable. What we've seen in Hong Kong in the geographical constituencies is a substantial increase in registration and we've set out to register in these functional constituencies and in my judgement, the Boundary and Election Commission have done pretty well to get as high as they have.

There are difficulties in carrying through the task. Not least because you have to be on the geographical register in order to qualify for a functional constituency vote. I don't think that's unreasonable. It's been the situation since 1985. We haven't started it afresh but what is fair? At the end of polling day, 14 times as many people will have had a chance in 1995 of voting in functional constituencies as voted in functional constituencies in 1991. I think that represents a considerable advance. We'll have about a million people voting in those functional constituencies, maybe a few more, maybe a few less and I hope it will be many more in functional constituency elections thereafter.

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