TNAG-1852-FCO40-2627-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 194

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OFFICE OF THE BRITISH SENIOR REPRESENTATIVE, SINO-BRITISH JOINT LIAISON GROUP

St John's Building

33 Garden Road

PO Box 528

Hong Kong

Telephone 5-8682171, 5-8682416, 5-8682431, 5-8682435

C T Wood Esq

Hong Kong Department

FCO

Your reference

Speleen. Letter ant. /Enterp. The

три

Mr Pul

Dean Chris, The 2

GREATER OPENNESS ABOUT WORK

Our reference

Date 4 August 1989

I where do we stand

to the FAC?

replyny

одите

2. I am not at all sure we can do

much to meet The TAC rec.,

of the options here

uptions "May twe discuss?

discuss are very

attractive.

1.

In considering what we might include under the possible agenda item of Confidence for JLG XIII, it occurs to me that we need to consider whether any action is necessary or desirable in response to the FAC's recommendation that "we should make greater efforts to respond directly to the people of Hong Kong in informing them and consulting them on the implementation of the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong" (paragraph 4.28) and that "the British side of the JLG could be more forthcoming about its activities without prejudicing its ability to negotiate".

2. I am not sure that in fact there is a lot of scope for being more forthcoming about the contents of the negotiations. We do go into fairly explicit detail during the tea-party, albeit on a non-attributable basis. It would, I suppose, be possible for us to make the Communiqué a fuller document to include the sort of detail which we divulge during the tea-party and at subsequent briefings of the local press here, but given the problems we already have in negotiating the existing style of Communiqué with the Chinese, this is not a very attractive option. I am not convinced either that it would necessarily result in more information being made available to the people of Hong Kong.

3. Perhaps a more attractive route to persuading people that we were not making deals behind closed doors would be some mechanism for formal consultation such as was suggested by Mr Lo (paragraph 4.28). There would be obvious difficulties of confidentiality in creating such a group. Another route might be to include an appropriate ExCo member in our discussions in order to persuade people that their interests were being considered. It is arguable that the presence of Hong Kong Government representatives at JLG meetings and the full briefings which are in any case given to ExCo should be sufficient to meet people's concerns. But clearly we must give careful thought to the recommendation.

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