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Governor's question-and-answer session in LegCo

Following is a transcript of the question-and-answer session by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, in the Legislative Council today (Thursday):

Governor: Mr President, I'd like to begin by saying a few words about the Court of Final Appeal. When we proposed the Court of Final Appeal as one of the topics for discussion this afternoon, we had anticipated that this week's expert talks would have finished by now. As Members will know they were originally scheduled to last for two days, and we'd anticipated as well that I would therefore be able to report to the Council in broad terms what progress had been made. However, as Honourable Members may know, the talks are continuing today and indeed are taking place as I speak. In these circumstances I'm sure that Members will recognise that I'll need to be more than usually constrained, a polite word, in what I say on this topic this afternoon.

It's been our objective all along, as Members know, to proceed with a Court of Final Appeal Bill with China's agreement. We're engaged in detailed talks with the Chinese side to that end. I very much hope they will bear fruit. Members have urged the Administration to proceed with the Bill as soon as possible. So we have a common purpose in this respect at least. I would not wish anything said this afternoon to prejudice the possibility of a successful outcome to the talks in any way and I'm sure that Members would share that wish. However, I do of course recognise this Council's understandable desire to be kept closely informed of developments on this important issue. I can assure Members that the Administration will make a full statement on the outcome of the talks the moment we are in a position to do so.

Mr Lee Cheuk-yan (through interpreter): Thank you, Mr President. In the recent Hang Seng Report, an authoritative report, it indicates that this year the unemployment rate in Hong Kong will be 3.2 per cent and the report is of the view that imported workers compete for jobs with local workers. Therefore, various parties are concerned about unemployment rate pushed high up because of imported labour and we have been having workers being laid off.

So will the Government consider taking the following steps immediately: first, announcing immediately that for the general importation of labour scheme, it will be suspended immediately so that of the 25,000 imported workers, they will fade out in two years' time? And at present we have some 4,000 imported workers whose employers have already got a quota but they have not been imported into Hong Kong yet. Will the Governor immediately take action so that these imported workers will not be imported into Hong Kong? Thank you, Mr President.

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