:
Mw.s-Carter
Advice please
3/12
CONFIDENTIAL
Ref: TC 154/68
9) Pree
(GR 4/3221/63)
Mar Moreton,
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG.
370
0
2 November, 1968.
Please refer to Heath Mason's letter (HWB 14/61) of 5th September about Gerald de Basto's meeting with Lord Shepherd on 9th August. I would like to comment
as follows on the points that he raised.
Appointments to the Supreme Court Bench
de Basto appears to have based his argument on the need to dispel any doubt that the community might have that the Supreme Court Bench was not impartial. We do not believe that such doubts are in fact enter-
tained by the community, with the exception of those few who for their own purposes seek to impugn the integrity of the Government in all its aspects. If such doubts did exist, they seem hardly likely to be dispelled by the occasional appointment to the Bench in exceptional circumstances of a practising local
barrister.
It seems more likely that de Basto is merely using this argument in support of a contention that some of the plums of high office should be available to the local Bar. We do not believe that this is a valid contention. Unlike the system in England, the two streams of official and unofficial barristers are quite separate here, and there seems to be no good reason why a barrister who chose private practice in preference to the Public Service should necessarily have any special claim to consideration for high judicial office.
It seems to us that such appointments would be justified at the present juncture only if -
/(a)
J.O. Moreton, Esq., C.M.G., M.C., Foreign & Commonwealth Office,
LONDON, S.W.1.
CONFIDENTIAL
BF.
Aneo
(20
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.