CONFIDENTIAL
7. Real responsibility to their own electorate is borne by local ministers for law and order, in societies which are quite different from our own, where violence may be more frequent and where reactions to different forms of law enforcement and punishment are certainly not the same as in this country. The real issue for Ministers seems to me to be not what we feel, but whether the feelings of Members of Farliament about capital punishment in this country should override Parliament's responsibility for the proper devolution of power to ministers in dependencies for law and order. The paper does not discuss this and it is at least open to doubt whether Members of Parliament will take such a simplistic view of this complex question as the paper seems to suggest.
CONFIDENTIAL
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