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He said:-Mr. Chairman, I beg to move the motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. As we have a heavy agenda in front of us I am not going to give the reasons for the motion. They are, in my opinion, sufficiently set out in the explanatory note before this Council.

DR. P. F. Woo seconded.

The question was put.

The motion was carried.

THE CHAIRMAN moved the following motion:

THAT this Council endorse the Statement of Aims for 1964 tabled today.

He said: I rise to move the motion standing in my name as Item 4(2) on the Order Paper.

In the past, as Members are aware, the annual conventional debate has been held in April and May. It has been on the basis that the Council accept the Statement of Progress and Policy for the past financial year and in particular endorse the Summary of the Council's main policy aims for the coming financial year.

At the meeting of the Council last April, Mr. BERNACCHI suggested that the debate should, in future, be held later in the year, because its proximity to the budget debate in Legislative Council detracted from its publicity value. This suggestion was considered by Members and it was agreed that future annual conventional debates should be held in the months of December and January. It was also agreed that the departmental report on progress in the Government's financial year should be tabled as usual at the April meeting. Today we see the inauguration of this new procedure for the annual conventional debate.

My official colleagues and I look forward once again with interest to the speeches which we are about to hear. When they are over, it will be moved that the debate be adjourned to the next meeting, when official members will make their several replies.

I beg to move.

THE VICE-CHAIRMAN seconded.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI:-Mr. Chairman, I rise to open this Annual Debate and would say formally that I support the motion as tabled. Paragraph 33 in the Statement of Aims that you, Sir, have just proposed is: "To make recommendations to the Government that there shall be a gradual enlargement of the Council's scope and for its representation on various other public bodies". In respect to the Council's representation on various other public bodies I would go further and I would say that it would be a good thing for the Chairmen of the majority of public bodies to be an unofficial either elected or appointed and that it would get the Government far more in step with the thinking of the people of Hong Kong if this policy were to be adopted.

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As regards the enlargement of the Council's scope and our activities, you, Sir, will undoubtedly recall a series of questions and supplementary questions I asked you at the previous meeting about the doings of the Urban Services Department in the New Territories. I would indeed be prepared to argue in law that the Urban Services Department is not authorized to exercise authority over anything or anywhere that the Urban Council has not been given jurisdiction to exercise control by His Excellency the Governor, under section 54 of the Urban Council Ordinance. The authority of the Urban Services Department is contained, of course, in section 55 of the same Ordinance. But I say apart from the legal aspect, Hong Kong is now becoming one big urban centre and such parts of the New Territories as are country in the true sense of the word are becoming less and less so. If Government wants to distinguish between the services rendered by the Urban Services Department in the New Territories particularly as to beaches and street cleaning and the control of hawkers and markets then they must have or form a Rural Services Department under the Commissioner for the New Territories, but in my submission such a step would be retrograde, and I propose that the Urban Council be given jurisdiction over such work as the Urban Services Department does in the New Territories. The fact is that I am inclined to think the Commissioner for the New Territories Department has had its day and such work as is peculiar to that department might well be exercised by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs Department, the other departments, and the Urban Council take over the rest i.e., Public Works Department for public works, the Urban Council for Resettlement, the control of beaches, the control of street cleaning, the control of markets and hawkers, and lastly but by no means least the control of the Police Force which has always been under the Commissioner of Police who has a separate division for the New Territories. Some years ago a District Commissioner for the New Territories mentioned in conversation that, as time went on, the New Territories must become more and more urbanized to meet Hong Kong's growing population. I agree with him, although it would be a pity indeed to see all the New Territories urbanized and I hope that we do not reach that stage even ultimately. But I myself recommend to Government that a stage has been reached where a Government enquiry should be instituted into the advisability of continuing the Department of the District Commissioner. But I have been diverting from my main point which is, that I recommend that if the Urban Services Department is to continue in the New Territories then, the Urban Council should be given jurisdiction over

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