4.
- He hoped that it would be possible to enact
legislation by the summer recess if only for the sake of business confidence: but under questioning, accepted that this could well be difficult and volunteered that there was probably flexibility as to the eventual timing of enactment.
- He assumed that if we were willing to go into
talks, we would have decided in advance that we would make concessions on functional
constituencies and the Election Committee; otherwise why bother with talks?
- He said that the group of independent LegCo
members who had been drafting amendments to the Governor's proposals before Christmas had not taken their work forward since then, given the likelihood of talks.
He was mulling over whether to propose a motion debate in LegCo on 21 April which would (a) call for Sino-British talks and (b) lay down a number of markers about LegCo's views, drawn from the earlier motion debates eg, support for lowering the voting age, first past the post voting system etc. The purpose would be to ease the pressure for immediate introduction of the Bill into LegCo and therefore give the Governor some more room for
manoeuvre.
I
Comment. The latter point strikes me as an interesting idea which might buy some more time if we needed it. encouraged Mr Barrow to discuss it with the Hong Kong Government.
Prichats
PF Ricketts
hum30.3barrow/MINUTES
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.