TNAG-1173-FCO40-1465-Future-of-Hong-Kong-special-study-by-FCO-for-the-Prime-Minis-1982 — Page 72

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Legislative Requiv mint?

DSR 11C

Existing powers

of Hong Kong

3. So long as the ceded areas remain under UK

areas

by

the

sovereignty or the remaining of the colony are held

UK under lease, provision for the 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 the

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 constitutional

convention. If the UK were to agree to relinquish

its sovereignty over the ceded parts of the colony of

/ Hong

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