hopeless. We have to go.beyond that, and we have to consider ·. very carefully what the benefit is, what the losses will be, to six million people who are in our charge. And on those grounds, and I come back to Mr Sumberg in the end, I say that this is a dangerous and a reckless policy, and we should go for the lesser evil, namely settlement on the best terms we can Humiliating it might appear, but British face is of secondary consideration, Mr Chairman; in this. It is our responsibilities to Hong Kong, and on that I think, Mr Sumberg, au revoir.
get.
Mr Sumberg: We are at one, but the point that I would make to you is that the people of Hong Kong, when they answer those questions, when they instruct those who are democratically elected in LegCo, they are capable of making the same evaluation of the consequences as, respectfully, you are or anybody else is. The question might not be put in exactly the terms that clarify the issue, but they know what it means when they say they are in favour of the Governor's package. These are not naive people, and therefore they understand the same consequences that you have outlined with great clarity to this Committee. Now why should therefore they take a different view from you?
Sir Percy Cradock: I really cannot answer that, Mr Sumberg, but I would take up one further point that you made, where you referred mainly to the directly-elected people who came in 1991. There are of course many other groups of opinion in Hong Kong, as you are well aware, and they do not all take the same view as, for example, Mr Martin Lee, so society has a great spectrum in Hong Kong as it has in every other country.
I would hesitate to say here and now, before this Committee, this is what Hong Kong wants, on the basis of the information we have in front of us. In any case, I would remind the Committee that the other party to this business, the people who have to sign it off in the end, are the Chinese, and they will not answer for - or will not respect simply the wishes of an advisory body in Hong Kong. They insist that the matter should be dealt with between London and Hong Kong, and we have to think about that and we have to think about the long-term effects of the policy we are undertaking.
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