Registry No. HK K 14/30
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret. Secret. Confidential. Restricted. Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
DRAFT
To:-
Type 1 +
From
E. 0. Laird
D. R. Holmes, Esq, CMG, OBE, MC,
Acting Colonial Secretary,
HONG KONG
.............................In Confidence
"It was rallur
ironical Imr 1.70 Petrie slowld be addressed in surn lerm,
Térm for (though che
Baso does not know this) le
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
Hong Kong
in September
૩૬
When I was in Hong Kong last month I die-
cussed with Denys Roberts Gerald de Basto's campaign
on the matter of appointments from the Bar to the
Supreme Court Bench.
I raised this because de Basto wrote to McPetrie
last May saying inter alia "the Bar has no reason to
suppose that the present Chief Justice is in any way
opposed to the appointment of practising members of
the Bar to the Supreme Court Bench and the Bar
Committee can only assume that the continuation of the
present policy is one undertaken on your personal advice as Legal Adviser to the Secretary of State".^
This was of course/gressly unfair since MePetrie has
for some time urged acceptance of the principle that
an occasional appointment to the Bench direct from the
Bar may be justified in the public interests even
where there is a suitable Service candidate available.
A copy of de Basto's letter is enclosed.
It was clearly not right that McPetrie should
into a personal correspondence with de Basto 1
be drawninto
regarding the policy of HMG and the Hong Kong Govern-
ment on this matter, and I accordingly agreed with
McPetrie that he should send a simple acknowledgement
to de Basto saying that his letter had been passed to
the Department of the FCO responsible for dealing with
/policy
(118281) Dd. 391599 1,500M 2/69 Hw.
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