TNAG-0573-FCO40-706-Monitoring-of-progress-made-on-planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 176

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It is essential that this legislative programme should continue. During the current session, your Government will therefore introduce further measures to improve legislation governing employment and working conditions. In particular, amendments to the Employment Ordinance will be introduced to provide for one week's holiday with pay from 1978 and for one rest day a week (instead of 4 a month) next year, and for improvements in severance pay and sickness benefits. Final details are being drawn up to implement the compensation scheme for workers suffering from

silicosis and asbestosis. The detailed review of the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance will also continue and it has become evident that certain improvements should be effected in the course of this session. Further safety legislation and legislation to provide greater protection of wages in the case of bankruptcy or liquidation are also under consideration.

I shall leave the Commissioner for Labour to expand upon the details of the legislative programme.

In the other social fields I have described we have set ourselves targets defined in quantity and time. It is important that in this field of labour legislation too we should have a clear idea of what our objectives are. Your Government has concluded that we should set ourselves the target of achieving a level of legislation governing safety, health and conditions of employment at least broadly equivalent to the best in our neigbouring countries whose stage of economic development and social and cultural background are similar to our own, which in effect means our principal Asian competitors excluding Japan.

It is true that our workers' incomes are higher than our competitors', and that their standard of living as a whole compares well. But I do not believe Hon. Members would believe it right that on this account we should aim at providing them with less protection, nor could we defend a lower target internationally or against the background of the sort of society we are trying to build. This is a field in which we have made substantial progress in the last 6 or 7 years, but we have to go farther to reach the standard we have set, and I am sure we can do so fairly fast and well within 5 years. Indeed the legislation now proposed will go a long way towards closing the gap. I am satisfied that we can do so by steps graduated so as not to affect materially our competitive position. But in the mood current in some of our main markets the danger to our commercial prospects of

failure to make rapid progress could well be greater than the comparatively small implications for our competitive position. For all these reasons but particularly because I believe it to be right for our society I attach great importance to this legislation, and trust it will receive the support of Hon. Members.