TNAG-1333-FCO40-1765-Future-of-Hong-Kong-legislation-1985 — Page 291

SECRET

We

7. We believe that the second of these options (6(b)) would not

enable us to ratify the agreement, because there would be a danger

of Parliament not granting approval of the order in council.

therefore favour the third option (6(c)) which would leave a trigger

mechanism

in

our hands in the form of the order in council which

would not be brought into force until 1997. Although this would be

of little practical use, because if we did not bring the order into

force there is little doubt that the Chinese would seek to resume

sovereignty over Hong Kong anyway, it would have presentational

advantages in the case of legislating for an event so far in the

future. For this reason we would prefer option 6(c) to the

alternative of 6(a).

PASSAGE OF THE BILL

8.

Parliament will have been given an opportunity to debate the agreement in December, and we would not therefore anticipate any

great difficulties in the bill's passage through Parliament.

This

issue is however a sensitive one and it is not possible to rule out

controversy altogether.

CONCLUSION

Land.

1

9. We therefore propose to prepare a short bill dealing with the termination of sovereignty and the transfer of the Crown's rights on

The bill will take the form of an act of Parliament enabling

an order in council. If the committee agrees the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will seek authority to give

instructions to Parliamentary Counsel for such a bill immediately after the initialling of the agreement.

SECRET

CODE 18-77