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Under the Road Traffic (Registration and Licensing of Vehicles) Regulations, vehicles unable to comply with the specified emission standards will not be registered. On the other hand, in-use commercial vehicles, and private cars over six years old, have to attend annual inspections during which they have to pass an emissions test before they can have their licences renewed by the Transport Department. Moreover, emission of excessive smoke is an offence under the Road Traffic (Construction, and Maintenance of Vehicles) Regulation, which is enforced by the Environmental Protection Department and the Police. We are now working on measures to further strengthen the emission inspections and to increase the penalties on repeated offenders.

We do not support transforming the Environmental Protection Department into a separate policy branch. Like other government departments, the Environmental Protection Department already enjoys a large degree of autonomy and flexibility in deploying resources to meet its priorities and to ensure effective and efficient implementation of environmental protection policies. Given that the prevention and abatement of pollution requires concerted efforts in planning and land controls, there is a clear need to ensure that environmental protection work is integrated with planning and land administration procedures, and that environmental control is co-ordinated with land and building control. The existing integrated set-up of the Planning, Environment and Lands Branch provides this essential linkage and collaboration at the policy level and it would not be cost effective to establish a dedicated branch for environmental protection.

Conditions of issue of HK permanent ID cards

Following are a question by the Hon Henry Tang Ying-yen and a written reply by the Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, at the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):

Question:

Will the Government inform this Council whether any person with less than seven years' residency in the territory was issued with a Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card in the past; if so, what the reasons for this were, and the number of cases in which Hong Kong Permanent Identity Cards were issued to such persons in each of the past 5 years?