TNAG-2450-FCO40-3567-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1992 — Page 146

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18.

I intend the new Executive Council to be a

non-political body to which I can look for sound, impartial advice on the wide range of issues that

confront the administration.

I am therefore appointing

to ExCo senior officials of our government and a number of independent members of the community, distinguished in their own walks of life, who can give me advice without the conflicting loyalties of active day-to-day political

I also intend that EXCO should spend more

involvement.

time on strategic issues, and less on the minutiae of government, than has recently been the case.

I shall be

asking its unofficial members from time to time to develop policies with the administration in those fields where they have particular expertise.

Those will be the

policies which it will then be the administration's task to explain to this Council, and to persuade this Council to adopt and develop. What accountability means in practice is creative dialoque between the Administration

and that is the area to which I next turn.

and you

19.

Separation implies that this Council must be

left free to run its own affairs and, in the process, develop further its relationship with the Government. That is the position now laid down in the Royal Instructions, and will be the position, set out in Article 75 of the Basic Law, in the future.

As an

SECRET

SECRET

to