CONFIDENTIAL
130
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
7 December 1984
CH de Waal Esq CB
Office of the Parliamentary Counsel
36 Whitehall
London SW1A 2AY
MKK 040/53
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
10DEC1984
FRUSTRY
FA
Action Taken
Pear
Year de Waal,
HONG KONG BILL
1.
Thank you for your letter of 30 November and the enclosed revised draft of the Bill. We have the following comments.
Clause 1(1)
2.
This seems to us to be effective and in accordance with our instructions to you. It follows the language used in Section 2 of the Cyprus Act 1960 (c. 52) and we would not wish without good reason to depart from the precedent. It has however been put to me by the Attorney General of Hong Kong that there would be political advantage in having a more obvious assertion of present British sovereignty. His suggestion is that this could be achieved if the words "have no" were replaced by "cease to have". This is entirely a political point, and my administrators have agreed that an amendment to this effect should be made, unless departure from the precedent of the Cyprus Act would, in Counsel's view, create difficulty.
If you adopt the Attorney General's suggestion this may require consequential amendment of the first two words of the sub-paragraph.
Schedule
Paragraph 1
3. We take it that the word "enactment does not include any Order in Council made under the royal prerogative, or the Hong Kong Letters Patent and Royal Instructions or local Hong Kong laws.
CONFIDENTIAL
/Paragraph 2(1)(a)
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