TNAG-1289-FCO40-1641-Terminology-for-the-description-of-Hong-Kong-by-internationa-1984 — Page 17

香港布政司署

CR L/M 362/84

ал

bany

Speedpost

Urgent

(432)

CHIEF SECRETARY'S OFFICE, GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT, HONG KONG

27 December 1984

Amendments to Letters Patent and Royal Instructions

425

I refer to my letter of 30 November 1984, with which were enclosed for your urgent consideration and comments, drafts of the amendments to the Letters Patent and the Royal Instructions which we believed to be necessary to provide for the reconstitution of the Legislative Council in 1985, as announced in the White Paper on the Further Development of Representative Government in Hong Kong.

Since then our legal advisers have had some further thoughts about some of the proposed amendments and they have produced the enclosed revised drafts.

The main new features of the revised drafts are

(a) A saving provision has been added to both the

Letters Patent and the Royal Instructions to provide that the existing law will continue to apply to the Legislative Council so as to preserve it intact until the end of the present session;

(b) Provision is included to enable the Legislative

Council to pass the proposed new Electoral Bill, in anticipation of its new constitution, in February/March 1985;

x

(c) The original amendments providing for the

dissolution of the Legislative Council, as a whole, have been modified to provide for dissolution of the elected membership only. The effect of this change will be that when a dissolution (of the elected membership) is ordered, vacancies will occur among the elected membership only. The official and appointed members will continue to hold office in the interim while elections take place. Thus the Legislative Council can be recalled, as may be required,

before the elections are held.

A C Galsworthy, Esq,

Hong Kong Department,

Акк

Foreign & Commonwealth Office,

White Hall, Swl,

London.

/Appointed

011 13

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

INDEX

-2 JAN1985

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