TNAG-1378-FCO40-1826-Future-of-Hong-Kong-legislation-Hong-Kong-Bill-1985 — Page 25

CONFIDENTIAL

12 yem

дета

i advance

(b) DEFENCE OF THE BILL IN GENERAL

[IF IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE BILL SHOULD NOT BE PUT

FORWARD UNTIL THE BASIC LAW HAS BEEN PASSED]

Some Noble Lords have suggested that it is wrong to legislate for an event

still 12 years in the future. They have suggested that we should wait until we have seen the Chinese Basic Law before passing our own Act.

Such a delay would not be possible. The agreement was made on the basis that we would proceed to ratification before the promulgation of the Basic Law. Ratification

must take place before 30 June 1985, and the Basic Law is

unlikely to be promulgated before 1990. In order to

ratify the agreement the Government needs legislation to

be in place now.

[If necessary: It was an essential Chinese requirement

for the agreement that there should be a firm date for

ratification. They would have preferred the period to be very much shorter, and this point proved to be extremely

difficult to resolve, 30 June 1985 was

a compromise].

Nor do we need to wait to see the Basic law.

Paragraph

3 (12) of the Joint Declaration makes it clear that the

policies set out in that paragraph and in Annex I will be stipulated in the Basic Law. We therefore already know a

great deal about the shape that the Basic law will take.

It was on this basis that the agreement was put to

CONFIDENTIAL

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