TNAG-1173-FCO40-1465-Future-of-Hong-Kong-special-study-by-FCO-for-the-Prime-Minis-1982 — Page 157

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C.

Legislative Requirements

Existing Powers

3. So long as the ceded areas of Hong Kong remain under

UK sovereignty or the remaining areas of the colony are held

by the UK under lease, provision for their government can be

made (as at present) under the Royal prerogative by means of

Letters Patent, Orders in Council and Royal Instructions and

the power of Parliament to legislate for them will not be

impaired.

Relinquishment of sovereignty

4.

In more recent times, arrangements under which HMG have ceased to be responsible for the government of a colony

have invariably been sanctioned by Act of Parliament, whether

the territory continued to be part of Her Majesty's dominions

as (or as part of) an independent member of the Commonwealth

or whether it became (or became part of) an independent

republic (or separate monarchy) within the Commonwealth or

a foreign state. There are nineteenth-century precedents

for the cession of territory to a foreign State by the Crown

under the Royal prerogative without an Act of Parliament,

but since 1890 the sanction of an Act of Parliament has been

considered appropriate in each case even though, as a matter

of law, it might not have been strictly necessary, and this

practice may well have assumed the strength of a constitu-

tional convention. If the UK were to agree to relinquish

its sovereignty over the ceded parts of the colony of

/Hong Kong

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