HWB 18/15
REF.
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18 November 1968
Recently the Hong Kong Government sent us copies of new draft Hong Kong (Non-Domiciled Parties) Divorce Rules.
2.
The amendments proposed are extensive and it was therefore thought appropriate to revoke the existing rules and refnact them in modified form. The draft Rules were referred to our legal advisers who however got no further than the enabling clause before discovering that the Secretary of State has no legal power to make the rules. Evidently we must rectify this omission as soon as possible, and we believe that this can be done by an Order in Council made under Section I of the Ministers of the Crown (transfer of functions) Act 1946.
3. Our legal adviser minuted as follows:
"The Hong Kong Divorce Jurisdiction Order in Council 1935 (made under section 2 of the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Act 1926) applied the provisions of section 1 of that Act to Hong Kong in like manner as those provisions applied to India, subject to certain modifications, one being that in the application to Hong Kong the reference in those provisions to the Secretary of State in Council of India section 1 (4) of the Act should be read as referring to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. So far as I can ascertain this provision is still in force without any amendment and no provision was made in either of the two Orders which I mention below for the transfer from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs of the power conferred upon the former by the 1935 Order in Council. The Orders I refer to here are: -
The Transfer of Functions (Miscellaneous)
Order 1967 (No. 1967/486); and
The Transfer of Functions (Secretary of
State and Minister of Overseas Develoment) Order 1967 (No. 1967/973)
If the power was not transferred, it was not caught by article 2 of the Secretary of State for Foreign
/and Commonwealth
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