TNAG-2329-FCO40-3373-Hong-Kong-contacts-with-academics-and-writers-1991 — Page 103

see the need also for the identification of legal provisions which might impede steps towards representative and accountable government. I believe too that there is a need for discussion about rules which are needed to promote fairness in the exercise of executive discretion.

A.

THE FABRIC OF GOVERNMENT

The issues presented below are suggestions for formulation of a programme to be discussed in the first meeting of the Working Group.

(a)

THE HONG KONG CIVIL SERVICE: STEPS TOWARDS ACCOUNTABILITY

As was

seen in Part Four, the Basic Law incorporates a very limited form of accountability. In his introduction to The Hong Kong Civil Service and its Future (ed. Scott and Burns, 1987), Ian Scott wrote:-

"The underlying assumption ..... is the certainty of

rapid social and political change. The critical question is how the civil service will respond to that change. It may react passively and defensively. Or it may seek to manage change in the wider public interest. Our belief is that if the people of Hong Kong are to get the government they deserve, there is a strong case for imaginative administrative reform which will bring about a civil service which is more open, responsive and better attuned to their

6

needs."

So three questions arise: Is this statement true? What has been done? What remains to be done?

Three years earlier, in 1984, the year in which Britain and China signed the Joint Declaration, Scott and Burns had written that:

"The possible institution of competitive elections

in the Legislative Council .. may require a rethinking of the relationship of civil servants to both the government and the community

"The civil service

tt

is only weakly and indirectly

accountable to the community. Hong Kong now has no

politicians or political parties to mediate between

the community and the bureaucracy. [Things have changed. ] Rather it relies on ad hoc arrangements through assemblies of local notables who are themselves dependent for their

authority on the government. As Hong Kong shakes off the British colonial legacy, its institutions of government are likely to be made more accountable,