TNAG-2715-FCO40-3921-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 67

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1.9. FAC/89

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A R Paul

Date: 18 October 1993

MEETING WITH THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS

COMMITTEE, 18 OCTOBER 1993

1. You, David Edwards and I had a session with the FAC this morning. We had considerably longer than the 45 minutes which had been allocated to us, because of the postponement of the meeting immediately following our session.

2.

The Committee's questions were generally sensible and well focused and were put in a sympathetic and unaggressive manner. The Chairman began by asking you to give your general impressions of the work of the JLG. You explained that progress was slow, partly because of political difficulties, but also because the Chinese lack the expertise to deal with complicated technical matters. The high hopes raised by the Prime Minister's visit to Peking in 1991 to sign the MOU on the airport had not been realised. But it was also true that the JLG had never made particularly rapid progress, even at the best of times.

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3. The Committee asked about the scope for unilateral action in the event of non-agreement. You and Mr Edwards explained that this could become necessary, eg in the case of localisation and adaptation of laws, given the need to pass the necessary legislation in order to avoid a legal vacuum in 1997. We also explained that the Hong Kong Government had already taken unilateral action where it could, eg over parts of the military estate. But there were limits to what were possible. It would, for example, be possible to negotiate air services agreements or arrangements with Hong Kong civil aviation partners, but these would have no validity after 1997. Similar considerations applied in the case of contracts and franchises. Mr Edwards explained that his work on multilateral treaties could not be carried forward without the agreement of the Chinese.

4.

The Committee asked a number of specific questions about the Court of Final Appeal, the right of abode issue and the Bill of Rights. We briefed them on the current position. The Committee asked if it was likely that the Bill of Rights would be overturned in 1997. We said that this was possible, but by no means inevitable. The Chinese reaction to the Bill of Rights when it had been passed had been relatively mild. Moreover the Bill of Rights had not caused any difficulties in practice. On the other hand, we noted that the Preliminary Working Committee had as part of its remit, the responsibility to advise on laws which were incompatible with the Basic Law.

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