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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

CHAIRMAN: -Dr. BELL, I shall not be speaking.

DR. BELL:---I was anxious not to deprive anybody of their seniority or to be accused of any discrimination. (Laughter).

Mr. Chairman, I support the motion before Council. United we stand, divided we fall. The Ad Hoc Committee which was set up to consider the future scope and operation of the Urban Council has produced a very comprehensive, very restrained and very feasible plan for modernizing local government, for increasing its efficiency and for permitting the citizens of this Colony to play their proper integral part like my colleagues. I congratulate the members of this Committee for the many long hours of hard work, study and thought which they have put in to produce this report and not the least deserving of con- gratulations is our Council Secretary, Mr. TINSON, who worked un- sparingly in his capacity as Secretary of the Ad Hoc Committee. (Hear.) (Hear.) All the members brought to bear their long experi- ence in the existing Urban Council with its serious limitations of scope and function.

This Ad Hoc Committee report is the first suggestion for the development of local government which has been made public and which has been put to Government for consideration by His Excellency the Governor following upon his speech in the last budget debate. The Working Party which Government itself set up to investigate and make recommendations as to the future development of local government has as yet not published its report. The report before us today is an outline of structure which purposely does not go into detail which would obscure the whole broad view. The detail must of necessity be considered by sub-committees which will in turn produce their reports to enhance the whole. Every word, every sentence and every paragraph of this report has been carefully chosen and only by the most careful reading can full understanding be obtained and when the latter obtains there is likely to be much less criticism.

Of course, there will be criticisms and it is to be hoped that they will be constructive. Appendix I of this report is interesting. Many local organizations were approached for their views on the development of local government, Appendix II is even more interesting—it is worth reading these replies and noting how few organizations were prepared to put forward constructive views, how they were to sit on the fence, how no replies were received from some and the late dates of replies received from others and where views have been expressed the Com- mittee has obviously taken them into account and given place to them. Of course, it is much easier to destroy with criticism than to construct.

One criticism already erroneously levelled at this report is that it is not new and is exactly the same as was suggested by Sir Mark YOUNG in 1947. I am told that what was suggested then was the formation

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of an elected municipal council which was to have less power than even the present day Urban Council has and only a promise to give it more power in the future, and an appalling feature was that there were to be two electorates, one formed of Europeans to vote for European members and the other of Chinese to vote for Chinese members, thus a racial tension would have been introduced which would no doubt have had the same disastrous consequences which can be seen in other parts of the world today. No such racial discrimination has every existed here in the three major Councils and I hope it never will. In fact the Reform Club of Hong Kong was originally formed to oppose the Mark YOUNG proposals for separate electorates and the Committee met with unofficial members of the then Legislative Council in 1949 to consider this and put forward proposals for elections to the Legislative Council. The unofficial members of Legislative Council resolved against becoming involved in Municipal Council legislation as a whole at that time but resolved that there should be some elected members to the Legislative Council. So how anyone can level the criticism that today's report which suggests wide powers of real local government by the Greater Hong Kong Council and district councils and one electorate for the national franchise with a residential qualification for the district franchise, is the same as the Mark YOUNG proposals, I cannot imagine. The very fact that Mr. BERNACCHI, the Chairman of the Hong Kong Reform Club has seconded the proposal that the report be adopted and that members of the Club here today support this proposal should make it clear that there is indeed no such similarity. The previous view that there should be a measure of elected representation to the Legislative Council is still held by the Hong Kong Reform Club and support of today's report in no way should obscure this.

I have two more points I would like to make about this report. First that to anyone reading it who comes from Britain and is not familiar with our present local government structure (or should I say lack of it) it must come as a surprise and somewhat of a shock that the suggestions of this report are not in fact already the practice in this large city of ours; and that there exists the present form of outmod- ed and undemocratic local government structure. Secondly, as Mr. BERNACCHI has said this report in fact recommends that the present Urban Council as it exists today should go out of existence. I want to stress that I hope this does not mean Government will accept this and at the same time not accept the recommendation, on which the whole report is based, of the formation of a Greater Hong Kong Council. I hope Government will not again lay itself open to the accusation that it is trying to divide and rule by merely setting up several district authorities with very little individual power and all channelling up to the colossal Colonial Secretariat instead of a Greater Hong Kong Council.

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