TNAG-2325-FCO40-3369-Hong-Kong-Bill-of-Rights-policy-1991 — Page 109

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THE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF HONG KONG

known to be unacceptable to the committee may never be referred to at all. Committee meetings are closed to the public and papers and minutes are confidential (apart from unauthorized leaks to the press). Open meetings would reassure the suspicious that the committee system operates impartially, and members would be more likely to be conscious of their responsibility to the community and less inclined to pursue a sectional or personal line. In 1985 meetings of the Legislative Council Finance Committee and the Public Accounts Committee were opened to the public, and it is to be hoped that other committees will now follow this example.20

The strongest criticism of the committee system occurs when a com- mittee's decision is reversed or ignored within the Secretariat or in the final determination of policy by the Executive Council, though reasons must be given to justify the rejection or modification of an advisory committee's views when a paper is tabled in the Executive Council, Some suggestions may be turned down because of objections from other departments or because they cannot be fitted into the overall framework of government policy. But the most usual reason for rejection is that such committee proposals require additional funds for their imple- mentation which the Financial Secretary is unwilling to make available. Such refusals to sanction what the committee regards as desirable pro- jects (which may in some cases have the unvoiced support of the depart- ment concerned) arouse strong resentment and lead to demands that committees should be given ‘real powers', their own sources of funds, and the right to insist that the programmes they favour should be carried through irrespective of the other demands on government's resources. Government is here the victim of its own propaganda. In order to dis- guise the stark reality of the undemocratic administrative state in Hong Kong, its publicists emphasize the outward embellishments of popular consultation and numerous official committees, but they fail to remind their audience that a committee's advice is only advice and is always liable to be rejected if it impinges on other government priorities.

The committee system can also be criticized from a completely dif ferent angle. Consultation involves delay, so when government is not being criticized for its undemocratic procedures it finds itself under attack for dilatoriness in taking decisions and implementing them. The proliferation of committees was criticized in 1973 by the McKinsey con- sultants from the point of view of government efficiency. They recog- nized the 'valuable and essential' function that these bodies perform, but pointed out that senior staff typically spent 20-25 per cent of their time attending ad hoc and standing committees, whose 'effectiveness is uneven and frequently the benefits hardly seem to merit the increasing demands they made on the time of top level staff and busy private citizens'. They recommended that, after other reforms to the govern ment machine had been completed, there should be a comprehensive review of the roles and responsibilities of committees, which could lead to a reduction in their number and improvements in their effectiveness. Some modest results along these lines have been achieved. A review of

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