977
Hong Kong
20 JANUARY 1988
Hong Kong
978
C
[Sir Geoffrey Howe]
It is the solemn responsibility of the British Government to administer Hong Kong up to 30 June 1997 in the best interests of its people. We shall discharge that responsibility to the utmost of our abilities.
4.4 pm
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): I join the Foreign Secretary in paying tribute to the late Sir Edward Youde. I knew Sir Edward well and worked closely with him for a time. I was well aware of his many qualities and, of course, of his heroic past. It is right that we should remember him now.
The Opposition are grateful to the Government for agreeing to the Labour party's request for a debate on the annual report. We are grateful for the annual report itself. The useful availability of these reports seems somewhat at odds with the adamant rejection by the Foreign Secretary almost three years ago today-it was 21 January 1985– of requests by my right hon. and hon. Friends for annual reports on progress in Hong Kong following the agreement of 1984. Hansard for 21 January 1985 is littered with categorical rejections of the need and scope for such reports and the damage that they might inflict. The Foreign Secretary said:
"Such reports tend to be a repetition of previous reports in form... Although designed with the best intentions, they often have the opposite effect of that intended My. instinctive reaction to the annualisation of reports is to regard that practice as often diminishing the importance and value of the reports."
He said with enormous vehemence:
"one can become depressed by the wearisome familiarity of the structure of annual reports. They can fall into an annual rhythm, even when the scene is changing as rapidly as it is in Hong Kong. I am anxious not to condemn the reality of the subject to being encapsulated in a wearisome annual framework."-[Official Report, 21 January 1985; Vol. 71. c. 734 and 745.Į
I am pleased that the right hon. and learned Gentleman repented of that view, because I think that the whole House will agree that the series of annual reports is of great value to the House and the people of Hong Kong. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's change of mind is a forerunner of even more valuable mind changes on this and other matters.
The report contains much encouraging information. We congratulate the Joint Liaison Group on the agreed involvement of the Hong Kong special administrative region, as it will become in 1997, in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the multi-fibre arrangement, the Customs Co-operation Council and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. We are sure that, as a member of the International Labour Organisation, Hong Kong China will pursue more enlightened employment policies than do the present British Government.
We are pleased to learn of the air service agreement with the Netherlands and of the anticipated air service agreement with Switzerland. All this makes encouraging progress in the evolution of the unique experiment on which the Chinese People's Republic has agreed to embark with such breadth of mind and vision.
We greatly applaud other aspects of the report. In particular, we congratulate the Hong Kong housing authority on its plans in the coming financial year to complete a record 52,000 public housing units. That 52,000 in Hong Kong contrasts with an estimated 24,000
506
to 25,000 public sector completions in this country next year. Hong Kong, with one tenth of Britain's population, is building twice as many public sector homes as the Government are permitting.
This remarkable achievement would be matched in Britain by 500,000 new council houses which, heaven knows, we badly need. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary could persuade the Secretary of State for the Environment to take a sip to Hong Kong and, no, not to stay there that would be most unfair on our friends in Hong Kong; warlords are completely out of fashion in China but to learn much needed lessons about public provision for public need.
Mr. Cyril D. Townsend (Bexleyheath): Surely the right hon. Gentleman is far too sophisticated to put such an argument to the House. Does he not realise that Hong Kong has absorbed a very large number of refugees from mainland China who are utterly homeless? Conditions in Hong Kong are entirely different from those in Great Britain.
Mr. Kaufman: I accept that absolutely. I believe that Hong Kong has serious difficulties which I would not dismiss or underestimate for a moment, but we have serious difficulties, too. We also have a large number of homeless people who would benefit from such an admirable public sector housing programme as that in which Hong Kong is participating.
1 thank the Foreign Secretary for what he has said about the boat people. I acknowledge, as he did, the great difficulty of the problem. It is far from straightforward and a solution is not easy to find. We are ready to meet the Foreign Secretary and discuss with him, in a non- partisan way, potential ways in which the problem can be dealt with in an attempt to find a satisfactory outcome for those unhappy people.
As the Foreign Secretary has acknowledged, the debate is especially important as it comes just in advance of the White Paper which is due for publication next month. I very much hope that it is not a cut and dried document that is ready for the printer. I hope that what is being said today will have an effect on its content. If not, the debate is an empty charade and goes against the spirit in which the Government and the Opposition have approached this important issue.
I hope that the Foreign Secretary still has an open mind ́ about direct elections. I thought that the intervention of the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin), was curious. He drew attention to what he claimed was a small number of submissions by the people of Hong Kong on this issue. There were 125,833 submissions. I should have thought that if the Government, who preside over a country with 10 times the population of Hong Kong, had received 125,000 submissions on one item of policy, they would acknowledge that there was serious concern in the country about it. I cannot understand how such remarkable manifestation of concern can be dismissed, apparently, as trivial.
As the Foreign Secretary has said, it is not in doubt that elections will play a part in the composition of the Legislative Council after 1 July 1997. Annex 1 of the 1984 agreement the elaboration, as it is called, by the Government of the People's Republic of China on its basic policies regarding Hong Kong-states unequivocally:
"The Legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be constituted by elections.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.