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Presenter: This is an individual case. If you have any details just leave them with our colleagues and we'll see whether you can be helped.

Question: Yesterday in your speech you condemned self-censorship, I thought very rightly; it has been insidiously creeping into our society for some time and I heartily agree, in principle. But what about practice? The example of leading personalities who have expressed their minds, saying things about leading Chinese people - much less than other people have said about you for example have suffered for what they have said or what they have done, even in this free society, and this is very worrying. It is all right for people, well like yourself who can speak out, and some others whose position is safe, but people at the middle level, for instance a legislator who speaks out, might find himself out of office, someone not with right of abode here might find himself in danger of having to leave. What is your advice to people wanting to speak their minds other than on a potentially anonymous programme such as this?

Governor: Can I say straightaway that the ability to speak your mind, to speak out, though I hope in a courteous and not aggressive way, the ability to speak your mind is one of the fundamentals of living in a free society and what we are promised in Hong Kong under the Joint Declaration, under the Basic Law, is that we will continue to live in such a society and it therefore puzzles us when, for example, senior Chinese officials, as one did the other day, seek to make a distinction between the right to report things and the right to advocate things. It is not a distinction that we make or could make in our law, that we could make in a free society.

Of course we understand the importance of showing restraint on some issues but actually doctoring your views or your values for what you think is politically correct is, I think, a long step down a very slippery slope. Hong Kong has been as free a society as there is anywhere in Asia. Why have we got 58 daily newspapers in Hong Kong? Because this is an argumentative, open society in which just as there is an open market in goods, so there is an open market in ideas. And if that were to change, Hong Kong would be much the poorer, literally as well as figuratively.

Question (in Chinese): Mr Governor, in Beijing it was said that Mr Lu Ping said that when he meets you on June 30, 1997, he will say goodbye to you. Mr Governor, can you tell us how you would respond to Mr Lu Ping, please?

Governor: I will tell you exactly what I would do. I would say how sad it is that we hadn't met rather more frequently before. While of course in any civilised exchange between public servants, shaking hands and saying hello or goodbye in a courteous way should be taken for granted and shouldn't be the sort of thing that people write about in headlines, while that is true it would have been. I think, more helpful if Director Lu and I had met more frequently. But I mustn't make too much of a fuss about that. It would have been sensible, it would have been good for Hong Kong. I think that is what people in Hong Kong would have liked. But as it is I will have to wait until June 30 to see Director Lu and then wish him the best for the future, and I hope he will do the same with me.