TNAG-1440-FCO40-1924-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 162

FCO40 Hong Kong Department Records 聯邦事務部香港部檔案 All

13.

"The House of Commons has always claimed and enjoyed the right to exclude strangers and to debate with closed doors.

According to ancient usage the exclusion of strangers from the galleries could, at any time, be enforced without an order of the House; for, on a Member taking notice of their presence, the Speaker was obliged to order them to withdraw, without putting a question.

The inconvenience of the rule prompted the House to agree in May 1875 to a resolution, which provided that, if notice was taken that strangers were present, the Speaker, or the chairman, should forthwith put the question that strangers be ordered to withdraw; reserving to the Speaker, or the chairman, the power, whenever he thought fit, to order the withdrawal of strangers from any part of the House. An order that strangers do withdraw extends to the Press Gallery.

Individual instances of misconduct on the part of strangers admitted to the galleries of the House have occurred from time to time, and the offenders have been removed from the galleries, or the galleries have been closed by the Speaker's directions, or the Speaker has issued a warning of his intention to clear the galleries if disorderly behaviour were to continue. The Serjeant, with or without an express direction from the Speaker, has removed from the gallery of the House a stranger who was behaving in a disorderly manner and when the disorder has continued, the gallery has been cleared by the Speaker's directions."

Part 1 of the Ordinance is made up as follows

section 9:

It confers power to call witnesses before the Council and its committees and is made pursuant to the power conferred by Article VII of the Letters Patent (power to "make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Colony") as defined in Chenard v. Arissol (1949) A.C. 127, cited above. Erskine May (pp. 127, 739) states

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