TNAG-2333-FCO40-3394-Future-of-Hong-Kong-Hong-Kong-Court-of-Final-Appeal-Hong-Ko-1991 — Page 36

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CONFIDENTIAL

We propose

4.

These amount to a net addition of 7 or 8 Bills, several of

which are likely to be lengthy and/or politically contentious and we must find offsetting deletions from the programme.

that these should be: the Insider

(Deregulation) Bill; the Welfare of Animals at Slaughter Bill;

and Money Laundering Bill; the Judicial

the Drug Trafficking

Pensions Bill; the Social

Friendly Societies Bill.

expectation that there

Dealing Bill; the Agriculture

Security Equal Treatment Bill and the

Public consultation has raised the

will be a Friendly Societies Bill next

Session and drafting of it is well advanced.

recommend that consultation

We therefore

should proceed this Summer on the

basis of a draft Bill, and if all the potential technical

difficulties can be ironed out, we would be prepared to contemplate adding this Bill back.

5.

Overall, these changes would leave us with a

programme of 23-24 Bills with quite a bit of politically attractive material.

This may be on the heavy side for a fifth Session, but we reckon

that it provides a satisfactory basis on which to take forward

policy clearance and drafting over the

provisional programme now proposed is set out in Annex A; while

next few months.

Annex B lists and comments on the deletions and additions.

The

6.

I have

written separately to colleagues significantly

affected by the changes and those whose proposals for further

additions FLG considered could not be accommodated. I should, however, draw attention in particular to the Hong Kong (Appeals) Bill which comes into this category, since it was specifically

mentioned at the Cabinet discussion in February. FLG noted the

Foreign Secretary's view that the ending of appeal rights to the

UK is an important part of the preparations for 1997 and must be in place well before then, but did not accept that legislation

next Session was essential. Despite his advice that the Bill was

unlikely to be as contentious as last Session's Hong Kong

legislation, we felt that there were risks associated with it

which should not be run in a fifth Session. We propose however

CONFIDENTIAL