TNAG-1351-FCO40-1792-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1985 — Page 36

R!

HKK 011/7

THY

24 JAN 1985

HVORD

Mr Hoare, HKD

CONFIDENTIAL

FROM:

Paul Fifoot

17

DATE: 24 January 1985

c Sir J Freeland

LEGISLATION: WITHHOLDING ASSENT AND RESERVED POWERS

14

Sir P Haddon-Cave's letter of 18 January says that Hong Kong does

not "favour" the proposal that Bills relating to the legislative

Council or elections should be added to the list of Bills to

which the Governor is required to withhold his consent unless

he has previously obtained instructions or there is a suspending

Clause or the matter is of urgent necessity. As I commented in

my earlier minute (23 January), I am not convinced of the arguments in that letter for omitting such Bills from that list. However there is no consistent practice on this subject.

I have not made a wide trawl of the precedents, but there is

at least one case where Bills relating to elected members (in

a somewhat complicated constitution) were to be so reserved.

The more common provision, for which examples can be found in Tanganika 1955, Seychelles and Malaysia 1954 and Singapore 1955 is to acquire the reservation of "Any Bill which determines or regulates the privileges, immunities or powers of the Council

or of its members".

The purpose of this is obvious and it is

for consideration whether a similar provision should not be

included in the Hong Kong Royal Instructions.

2. An alternative to this formulation is to confer power to

make laws for privileges and immunities of the Council and its members so long as they do not exceed the powers and immunities enjoyed by the House of Commons at Westminster and its members, though I would be chary of introducing that kind of formula into the Hong Kong constitutional documents.

1

CONFIDENTIAL

/3.