CONFIDENTIAL
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RECEIVED IN RE SPAY MO. 51 13 AUG 1979
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Mr David Akers-Jones CMG JP
Secretary for the New Territories Hong Kong Housing Authority
Headquarters Building
4th and 5th Floors
101 Princess Margaret Road KOWLOON, HONG KONG
10 August 1979
MR DENNIS CANAVAN'S PQ: PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT AT TSUEN WAN
95
74
1. You may have noticed that the Hansard report of Mr Blaker's reply of 26 July to Dennis Canavan's Question about the property development at Tsuen Wan railway depot included a table that named Sir Y K Kan as an officer of Hong Kong Land despite the request in paragraph 8 of your telegram No 1055. I am afraid this happened as a result of a mix-up at this end. When we originally drafted the reply, we overlooked the points in para- graph 8 of your telegram and prepared a text which included a table showing the information in paragraphs 1 - 6 of that telegram. Fortunately (as we thought), we noticed our mistake in time and redrafted the reply in a form that was meant to omit the table (and proposed instead simply to put the published documents containing the information into the House of Commons Library we were pretty confident that in this way there was virtually no risk of anybody making a connection between the property development and Sir Y K's role as a member of Exco). But through a clerical error, a copy of the table remained attached to the text of the revised reply that was sent to the printers.
2. I am sorry that this happened. I hope that it has not led to any awkward questions in Hong Kong. Certainly there has been no follow-up here, and I hope that by the time Parliament reassembles, the whole incident will be over and forgotten.
W E Quantrill
Hong Kong and General Department
CONFIDENTIAL
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