TNAG-1365-FCO40-1811-Hong-Kong-Legislative-Council-(Powers-and-Privileges)-Bill-1-1985 — Page 127

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Communist element in Hong Kong wished to put pressure on a future legislature, one of the means they would employ would be personal attacks on offending members of that legislature. I would not

agree that it is

forbidden by law;

inappropriate for such attacks to be expressly and the view of Legal Advisers, with which I

have some sympathy, is that the Bill is now

is that the Bill is now too emasculated and does

not give the necessary protection to the legislature.

9. There is thus a difficult balance to be struck, and I am not

sure that in the welter of emotional criticism of the Bill the

second half of the equation has been fully understood. But I do not think that this is the time to reopen the question: it may be

possible to tackle it at a later stage when we have an elected

legislature. Hong Kong are looking at this.

10. It may be that with the radical amendments

amendments to the Bill the

storm will now subside. I think that it would have been helpful if Hong Kong and we had been able to identify the problem at an earlier

stage, and we propose to write to the Governor to see whether better

arrangements cannot be set up in future for early liaison on draft

legislation.

विश्वक

14 June 1985

A C Galsworthy

Hong Kong Department

1. I agree that criticism of the Bill has probably been excessively one-sided. Nevertheless, those handling the legis- lation in Hong Kong ought to have been able to anticipate a strong reaction to parts of the Bill, particularly clause 20(c) and (d) which would appear to be open to abuse by a legislature

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