PERSONAL &
CONFIDENTIAL
9.
virtually impossible.
This not only discourages home ownership, a very desirable development for the stability it brings, but also creates in our institutional housing social problems which are not found in the more natural environment of private development and which are now causing increasing concern.
I can do no more in this letter than indicate the delicate balance of emphasis and priorities at which we must aim: but I hope I have said enough to show that we have these problems under close scrutiny and that there are strong arguments against any expansion of the existing very considerable housing programme in general still less is there a case for expansion of the squatter resettlement sector of that !b programme in particular.
TE
TE A LE
Turning now to your last point, Unofficial Members are not so much opposed to the idea of a Parliamentary Commissioner type of institution in some form as convinced that, in the present Hong Kong context, we can produce a better-suited and more effective solution than the orthodox one. People here would
Schacter quite fail to understand that an orthodox Commissioner t HK/ reported to the Governor; or a sort of super-Governor
was not just a part of the Government machine if he
if he reported independently. Further, Unofficial Members have pointed out that the legal limitations under which he would have to work, even in the less restricted form in which our legiSation is held in draft (against the advice of the United Kingdom Parliamentary Commissioner, who has already been consulted in some detail), would quickly result in the institution being brought into contempt: since the great bulk of the representations made to him would not relate to administrative error but to challenges of established policy and requests for personal privileges
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