TNAG-1863-FCO40-2643-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Basic-Law-1989 — Page 41

CONFIDENTIAL

4. As mentionined above, we have commented generally on the text, but we have been very conscious of our limited status and the limited amount of time afforded to us for our meetings with the Chinese on these quesitons, so that in our discussions with the Chinese we have been selective, concentrating on substantive matters of significance and ignoring provisions which, even if they are not such as we would have included or are badly drafted, were not vicious. However, we have not felt so inhibited in making written comments and in a series of letters to my opposite number in the Chinese team at these meetings, I have raised a wide range of issues; we have also sent the Chinese a commentary on their first full draft together with a purely textual critique. We are sending a similar commentary and critique to them on the current draft

5. The Chinese intend to enact the BL at a meeting of the NPC in March 1990; before then they will have two further sets of meetings of the drafting groups in December and January. We, therefore, have a limited amount of time to go on record with any objections we may have on grounds of consistency on the BL with the JD. Clearly, if we do have such objections, we must make them; Parliament and public and political opinion in HK will demand it of us; and we must make our objections in sufficient time to enable the Chinese to take them into account if they are so inclined. We have already put them on warning that there are consistency issues outstanding. I enclose a letter I have drafted to Shao Tianren, proposing (without much hope) a further meeting and drawing attention to these and other outstanding questions, and the speaking note used in handing it over. We are submitting to Ministers proposing that this should be followed up by a letter from the Secretary of State or in a note from the Embassy formally stating our consistency objections and probably also drawing attention to other issues of particular concern to Hong Kong This letter or note must issue before 27 November.

Consistency issues

6. The number of matters which give rise to possible consistency issues are as indicated above, limited and only two which we have identified are serious, namely Articles 64 and 106/107. Our list of possibles is as follows:

(a) Article 64: JD50 provides that "the executive

authorities....shall be accountable to the legislature". The Government of the HKSAR are the "executive authorities"

(Article 59) and Article 64 provides that:

"The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must abide by the law and shall be accountable to the Legislative Council of the Region in the following respects: implementing laws passed by the Council and already in force; presenting regular reports on its work to the Council; answering questions raised by members of the Council; and obtaining approval from the Council for taxation and public expenditure.

CONFIDENTIAL