TNAG-0573-FCO40-706-Monitoring-of-progress-made-on-planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 18

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G. No, I think the reasons why we cannot have a sup reme council in Hong Kong based on the elective system is very well understood and I needn't repeat it all now.

And that is the prime consideration - elected members of the Urban Council of

course are not excluded from eligibility for the Legislative Council and there are

two on it at the moment.

Q. Do you see any relaxation in the present policy to allow perhaps elected members

of the Urban Council to at least take a place

G. The alected members are appointed, not so much because they are elected, but

because they are suitable people for the Legislative Council and they are doing a

very good job in it. There is no quota, as it were.

Q. So you don't foresee any even indirect elections and you are sort of saying that Legco formal

will be what it is now, there will be no sort of (interruption)

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G. I don't see any that a possibility for major constitutional change in Hong Kong. But I do see this as an evolving situation I don't think the present composition

or cross section of the community which the Legislative Council represents need necessarily be fixed for all time. There have been fairly drastic changes in the

last year or two as you know. And this is a situation which evolves, but the main

consideration, the thing of importance for the good government of Hong Kong and

for the confidence of the people in Hong Kong is that people in the Legislative

Council should be of a high quality and be able to deal with the extremely important

issues that come before them. This is the main consideration.

Q. About plans to improve labour legislation. I think you expressed the hope that

ultimately we should achieve equality with the best in Asia, outside of Japan. I

am just wondering, how far are we going towards achieving the standard of Singapore

in resp ect of minimum wages and restriction on overtime.

G. Well, what I said, and I think I;ve got it here, is, 'Your govemment has

concluded we should sat ourselves a target of achieving a level of legislation

governing safety, health and conditions of employment at least broadly eq uivalent

to the best in neighbouring countries whose state of economic development, social

cultural background are similar to our own which in effect means our principal

Asian competitors excluding Japan'. Now, I think there are tow things to say about

this. The first is that our target is not equivalent with a developed country like

America or a European country and I think that there has been some concern about this.

And the choice of this target, which was supported by the Prime Minister in Parliament

recently, I am sure is right. The sense of what I said was that we should now study

what comparative practice is amongst our competitors countries in East Asia, consider whether their p ractices are suitable for Hong Kong, and if they are,

and if we

are convinced they are, study the case for introducing them. But while the standard

of intemational comparability is not one that one can overlook, the price consideration

must always be whether a measure is of practical benefit to the people of Hong Kong.

Now, when you study comparability, and our study of this is by no means completa,

one of the things for instance that stood out was that every country in Asia except