TNAG-1327-FCO40-1740-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Ministerial-statements-1984 — Page 149

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Office had made, and was operating, efficient arrangements for handling all the letters, submissions, and media material it received through the processes of receipt, registration, translation, photocopying, analysis, assessment and final disposal.

(b) We considered that the accuracy of the Assessment Office's work would need to be judged in the context of the analyses, assessments and factual summaries it would have to make of all the material it received, and in particular of the "overall assessment of the extent of acceptance" of the draft agreement.

(c) We took the view that our rôle of observing, over a period of two months, "the work of the Assessment Office in all its aspects" should enable us to judge whether it had discharged all its duties impartially and had faithfully followed its prescribed procedures.

The Monitoring Programme

6. In the light of this approach we set ourselves a monitoring programme which would enable us, in effect, to audit the day-to-day work of the Assessment Office. In order to assist us in our monitoring rôle, we included in the programme arrangements to witness (in the words of our terms of reference)" aspects of the exercise of consultation ".

7. We were conscious of the delicate character of our 'audit' function. We had to keep in close touch with the Commissioner and his colleagues in the Assessment Office, so that we could scrutinise the material on which they were working and also raise any questions that we wished at those of their meetings we attended. At the same time we had to avoid trespassing, in any way, on the proper preserves of the Commissioner and his staff. We are grateful for the co-operative way in which they gave us access to every aspect of their work, and to all the material contributing to the Assessment Office report.

8. We took care to ensure that our witness' function should not be misunderstood. As our terms of reference made clear, it was not for us either to "receive expressions of public views" or to attempt in our report "to assess public opinion" on the draft agreement. We were convinced, however, that our attendance, as witnesses or observers, at selected parts of the consultation process would enhance the credibility of our rôle, particularly in the eyes of Hong Kong; and that it would also help us to monitor more effectively the work of the Assessment Office.

9. We discharged our audit functions in the following way:— (a) As a first step we examined the organisation of the Assessment Office and the instructions to its staff, which we noted had been tested in a practice run in the middle of September; and we attended a presen- tation, arranged at our request, of the procedures which the Assessment Office planned to apply. We also made it our business to become acquainted with the individual members of the Office, and to observe, without interfering, how they were performing their duties.

(b) Throughout the consultation period we carried out spot checks of the

way in which the Assessment Office was implementing its procedures- that is, the processes of collecting the letters and submissions from

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