C
Mr. Carter
HKK 14/14
Reference...
23
Please see (16), another letter from the Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association about the appointment of members of the Bar to the Bench.
2.
Mr. de Basto implies that his discussions with Lord Shepherd in August, 1968, should have been more than "exploratory" (as they were called in the Minister's letter at (14) on old file HWB 14/61) when they dealt with matters raised by his Association as long ago as 1964. He offers to make himself available for substantive discussion of the same matters with the Minister this summer, either in London or Hong Kong.
3.
Contrasting the increased establishment of the Hong Kong Legal Department with the numerically static Legal Bar he expects many of the graduates of the proposed Department of Law at the University in due course to be taken into Government legal service, thus increasing the disparity. Having remarked that as a rule, only after Independence in British Colonial Territories are local practising barristers elevated to the Bench, he says outright that the Legal service has a vested interest in the preservation of the system
4. Generally speaking, the tone of his letter suggests that Mr. de Basto is largely concerned to open up to the local Bar safe appointments to the Bench of those practising barristers "who have some substantial connection with Hong Kong by birth and/or education in the Colony or by many years residence". Read with his point about the anticipated recruitment of Hong Kong University legal graduates into Government service and a passing reference to the political uncertainty of the future, this is, if I am right, a new but still not disinterested line for his argument to take.
5.
It was the intention in the Minister's letter of October, 1968, to deter Mr. de Basto from his persistent attempts to deal substantively with the Minister over a subject which has already been broached demi-officially with the Government (letter from Mr. Mason to the Colonial Secretary at (9) on the old file) and which I understand on the substantive file the Legal Adviser has now suggested should be taken up officially with the Governor. therefore recommend that Mr. de Basto be given a reply which keeps him yet more firmly at arm's dis- tance while matters are taken further through the official channels. I have drafted accordingly.
8 April, 1969
Личих
I
(H. H. Stewart) Hong Kong Department
1. I have included in the draft nference to the matte which bithe Barto
was invited to
tave up in the the Ad in Hong Kong. I think there would be advantage in stewing him into tune local dealings than be seams to like
Mizuv
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