Lai22.3
CONFIDENTIAL
The Home Office Department responsible for the Fugitive Offenders Scheme have seen the section in Annex E relating to the Scheme. They agree that there is no alternative but to subsume existing arrangements into the bilateral Surrender of Fugitive offenders Agreements. However, they believe that the punishable sentence for returnable offences should read "12 months imprisonment" and not "2 years imprisonment".
As your memorandum notes (Annex B, item 8) the Chinese are likely to react negatively to any proposal involving Hong Kong membership of a formal Commonwealth Organisation after 1997, and that associate branch status in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for Hong Kong is likely to cause the Chinese difficulties. We share your view that this probably means that Hong Kong's link to the CPA should be ended. But we wondered whether there was any way in which this could be presented as a purely Parliament-to-Parliament link without Government involvement? It might be worth considering whether there was another way of funding the Hong Kong branch of the CPA to reinforce that. In our own case, the CPA branch is wholly autonomous and I imagine in practice the Hong Kong one is as well. It would be a pity to lose all links in a field where international support is likely to be particularly important post-1997, as well as particularly sensitive. But if you conclude that there is no way of avoiding the fact that this would be a link with a "governmental" organisation then we accept that it should be discontinued before 1997.
Sorry for the delay!
PF Ricketts
HONG KONG DEPARTMENT
Best wishes,
Rever
На
cc. Alan Paul,
is
UK Rep JLG.
CONFIDENTIAL
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