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Question: Paul Harrington of AFP. Foreign Secretary, but if you note that damage, do you then do something about it or do you just gauge it and leave it be?

Mr Rifkind: When you say do something about it, what are you envisaging?

Question: Well, it is not for me to have a plan.

Mr Rifkind: Well actually, no, I'm sorry, I mean people find it very easy to say what are you going to do about it, implying there is some magic formula that will absolve these problems if only the political will existed. Questions, if they are to be mature questions and justify mature answers, have to take into account these sort of points.

Question: Let me just say if I was Foreign Secretary I would like to think that I had a plan for this contingency.

Mr Rifkind: We cease to be the sovereign power next year. It is no use me suggesting to you or to the people of Hong Kong that the United Kingdom can suddenly produce some formula which will deal with the determined Chinese desire to dismantle institutions. What we can do is first of all make it unequivocally clear that we share the views of the Hong Kong people as to the damage that will be done by the dismantling of the institutions. And we can also emphasise that the fundamental question is whether Hong Kong's autonomy is to be respected and whether the people of Hong Kong will feel that their institutions are representative of the people of Hong Kong.

Question: Yesterday, in your preparatory remarks to the question session with legislators you emphasised the tremendous economic importance that Britain places on its economic ties with Hong Kong over those with China. At this late date in the negotiations for the transition after 1997, which would you say presents the weightier argument in Britain's mind, the economic or the political?

Mr Rifkind: Economic or political in relation to what?

Question: In relation to negotiations for the 1997 transition.