XN000022-1995-10-12 — Page 14

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The second thing I'd say is that something which seems to me to be important if we're going to have the sort of co-operation which the Honourable member referred to and which I certainly hope for, it is important for people not to rush into the headlines or not to denounce things before they know exactly what they are. And what we're very much hoping is that Honourable members will now find themselves in a dialogue with the Administration, in particular with our excellent Secretary for Education and Manpower. We are hoping that we can focus that debate and that dialogue on the summit that I'll be calling next month, and we very much hope that at the end of the discussion we will have proposals which command the consent of employers. employees and the Legislative Council in as large a measure as possible.

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Just let me say a couple of other things about the proposal. The first, again, is about the background of the proposal. What is the background? Is anybody seriously arguing that the whole of the reason for the increase in unemployment that we've seen in Hong Kong is the General Importation of Labour Scheme? In the last three years, in Hong Kong, we've increased the number of jobs by 10 per cent by 270,000. The work-force has increased by 11 per cent by just over 300,000 - for a variety of reasons: because some people who previously emigrated to Canada and Australia and elsewhere have come back; because the number of immigrants coming in from China has been high; the daily quota of 150 a day now means over 50,000 people coming in from China. Understandably, we are trying to avoid a big problem in 1997. But that is the fact.

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Now, against those sort of figures, plus demographic factors, with more people coming into the work-force than there are retiring, against those figures the actual numbers represented by the importation of labour are relatively slight. I'm not saying they are completely unimportant or completely irrelevant if I thought that, I wouldn't have sanctioned the proposals that we put to the Legislative Council yesterday - but they are only part of the issue, part of the problem. And what we mustn't do is to take any decision which makes Hong Kong less competitive and which encourages employers to move their capacity, move their manufacturing plant or whatever, elsewhere.