739
Mr. Bowen Wells]
Hong Kong
15 JULY 1988
children's future, which is guaranteed by the joint declaration for only 50 years, if we get the constition right. People leave Hong Kong because they have the opportunity to go overseas, but they are also worried about the frequent policy changes in the People's Republic of China. They cannot be certain that the current conditions and philosophy in Beijing will continue, and they doubt the Chinese Government's ability to maintain stability. They fear for the safety and welfare of intellectuals; they remember intellectuals who emigrated from the People's Republic of China because they were persecuted and oppressed during the cultural revolution.
I want to concentrate my remarks on the position of the Chief Executive under the Basic Law. When I visited Hong Kong, I was worried by the way in which the Hong Kong Government propose to develop the system of government when the People's Republic of China takes over in 1997. There seems to be no urgency to develop the institutions of government, particularly those that are needed to provide checks to the executive power held by the Governor, which we see reflected in the Basic Law, and to provide checks to the power of the Chief Executive, which I believe is overstrong and will be insufficiently checked by the legislature. The legislature will not be the prime institution, as the House of Commons and the House of Lords are in this country. The powers that are proposed for the Chief Executive violate the principle that this country fought for and won in 1688, and which was incorporated in the Bill of Rights.
The Chief Executive will be the superior power in many ways and will be able to maintain his position despite any lack of confidence from the legislature. I believe that if the Chief Executive loses the confidence of the legislature, or of the Beijing Government, he should resign and a new selection and election should take place. Under the draft Basic Law, there will be a complicated procedure.
It would be very much better if the Chief Executive were to be elected by an alternative system, which would be at least vaguely democratic-- that is, by selection by one tenth of the legislature, as proposed, and then by direct election on the basis of adult suffrage.
I shall illustrate the powers that will be unacceptable if they are not restricted by the legislature. The Chief Executive can appoint all judges and cannot be questioned on those appointments. There will be no means by which he can be checked when making those appointments. He will have the power to dissolve the legislature if it refuses to vote for legislation that he supports. That should be the other way round.
The Legislative Assembly has no powers to amend a budget, only to accept or reject it. The Chief Executive has the power, not just to appoint, but to remove, judges. Where is the independence of the judiciary there? The Chief Executive has powers similar to those of a colonial Government. In recent years the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not been distinguished in its ability to formulate constitutions which have endured for long without becoming the instruments of dictatorial forms of government in many of our former colonies. The draft Basic Law gives the same impression, and I urge my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary, in his attempts to revise it with the People's Republic of China, to ensure that the necessary checks on the Executive, the independence of the judiciary, universal adult suffrage and
374
Hong Kong
740
direct elections are built into the system of government instituted in 1997 with the support of the People's Republic of China and endure beyond that time.
That must be my right hon. and learned Friend's objective, and he has many levers of power to try to insist upon it. There are real reasons why the People's Republic of China wishes Hong Kong to be successful and independent. For instance, there is the question of Taiwan. We have the ultimate sanction of saying that the treaty has been broken, and there is much evidence to suggest that the proposed laws do not coincide with the joint declaration, as Professor Wade has said, and as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) mentioned today.
I believe that we have the opportunity, with great effort, to ensure that the new system of government is subject to the necessary checks and balances. That will restore confidence that the people of Hong Kong will be able to conduct their own affairs, that they do not need to leave Hong Kong, that they will not be subject to unnecessary interference from the Chinese Government and that the miracle of Hong Kong can continue.
1.37 pm
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): In this debate, I suffer the great disadvantage of never having lived in Hong Kong, although I have visited it, and of having no commercial or other interests, disclosed or undisclosed, in Hong Kong. That brings one advantage, however, in that I can speak dispassionately on the subject and to some extent also on this country's position.
I did not think of this as a debate about the Vietnamese refugees, but I very much endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) about that need for this country to be more generous in that context. Even if we have to wait until the flow has dried up, let us at least then pledge ourselves to be more generous and to take more refugees from the closed camps. This interesting debate has perhaps underestimated the enormous excitement of the extraordinary experiment that is to take place. The whole concept of one nation and two systems is of dramatic interest and hope for the future. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary was right to say that Hong Kong is and should remain the principal component of any burgeoning Anglo-Chinese partnership. He was also absolutely right to stress our duty to ensure that the Basic Law, which we do not draft, honours the joint declaration that we signed. That duty is the more pressing in view of the seeming reluctance of so many Hong Kong citizens to stick their heads above the parapet and make public comment in the present period of consultation.
We should also remember the international context of this debate. It is being held at a time when we have an extraordinary vindication of the open, relatively unrestric- ted, substantially capitalist system of trade over the inward-looking, heavily regulated, state-run economic systems which have hitherto been the principal legacy of Marxism in the 20th century. Generally speaking, I can well understand the natural anxiety in the PRC lest, on the one hand, it kills the golden goose by failing to create the confidence necessary to keep Hong Kong alive and, on the other, it kills the farmer's wife by so encouraging the goose that the whole basis of China's political and social philosophy is undermined. I do not think that that is a real
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