Foreign ånd Commonwealth Office
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125
From the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Goronwy-Roberts
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the Dear Lewis,
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8 October 1974
121)
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Dufonddy
A
Jim Callaghan has asked me to thank you for your letter of 30 September about the death penalty, in Hong Kong.
Jim and I are both, of course, well aware how strongly people in Hong Kong feel about the death penalty, and we discussed the whole question with the Governor when he was over here in June.
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The position, as I think you know, is that the death penalty is still part of Hong Kong law and that the Royal Prerogative of Mercy is delegated to the Governor under the Letters Patent and Royal Instructions of Hong Kong. Nevertheless it is constitutionally impossible for The Queen to empty herself of Her Frerogative. It is therefore always open to any condemned man to petition Her for the use of Her residual Prerogative of Mercy. This is what happened last year when the condemned man Tsoi was reprieved. We can be quite sure that in any subsequent cases in Hong Kong a similar petition would be received.
This brings the Secretary of State into the centre of the question, since The Queen acts on his advice. Last year in the case of Tsoi, Sir Alec Douglas-Home had to give his advice in the immediate context of the debates in the House on the death penalty in general and in Northern Ireland. I understand he concluded that there might well be a successful vote of censure in the House if an execution was allowed to go ahead in Hong Kong in those circumstances.
Lewis Carter-Jones Esq.
House of Commons
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