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minority opposition and was then excluded from the public meeting. The motion of 14th August, 1973 can now be used, if so desired, to hide from the public what are the true sentiments of certain Members. In any true and democratic body—please do not imagine that I consider the Urban Council to be anything like a democratic body and yet it is the only one with elected membership-in any democratic body, it is right that the public should hear clearly what each Member stands for. The motion, as it now stands in 1973, gives the opportunity for those opinions to be hidden from the public. It is deplorable that the electors should be asked to choose candidates if they are not permitted to know what those candidates stand for in public debate. I dislike the habit of some Councillors who, when an election approaches, suddenly begin to take an active part in public debate. I dislike it, but, nevertheless, it is for the public to decide which candidates are guilty of such behaviour and it is not the responsibility of this Council to muffle anyone, right or wrong, for any purpose whatsoever. I believe that this 1973 motion, as it stands, is being used to vent personal antagonisms and to muffle individual members and for this reason I am supporting Mr. BERNACCHI's motion to amend the motion of 14th August, 1973.

MR. LO TAK-SHING (in English): --Mr. Chairman, I gather we, all of us, speak on the first motion. The motion and speeches in support of it give me the impression that we are trying to tell the public, at least the movers and supporters of the motion are trying to tell the public, that the Council has been hiding something from it. I frankly don't understand this because all the matters, which the motion intends apparently to bring before the public, are matters either of sufficiently minor nature that we want to handle them in Standing Committee or are, in any event, matters which may be subject of motions by indi- vidual members at any time. Where they are matters of fact or dele- gation or other matters of this kind they are given in our annual and monthly reports. I don't quite follow where anything has been hidden. Therefore, my first point is that I don't subscribe to the view that anything is hidden at this stage. I think it is quite clear that in our debate in open meetings, we should really deal with involving matters of principle, involving matters of substance. I think that members of the public are sufficiently bored with us today without labouring them with minor details of delegations, or, for example, Dr. Denny HUANG having joined the H.K. Philharmonic Orchestra. These are not really matters of substance and you can find them in the monthly report, not something that we want to spend hours over. Matters of substance, matters of principle, and I think I detect an emo- tional feeling from the mover of the motion that matters of substance

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and matters of principle are being hidden from the public, well, if that's so and there is such a matter, I think that should be in itself a subject of the motion. For this reason, I have no strong feelings on what we debate in public and what we keep to Standing Committee. I have no very strong feelings about it, but I must say at the moment that I am inclined to leave things as they are until matters of substance do come up which do deserve public attention. So, on the whole, I feel happy to vote against the first motion.

MR. JOHN MACKENZIE (in English):-Mr. Chairman, as I under- stand Mr. BERNACCHI's motion (and, frankly, as a layman, I share with others the confusion which has arisen from his presentation,) he is questioning the legality of the Council's action in certain areas notably in delegating to Standing Committee of the Whole Council certain powers and complaining that, because of private discussions within the Standing Committee, there is a lack of information to the public. I would contest this. I think that we have attempted in the past year to provide information to the public on a scale which has not pre- viously been done in the Urban Council and, through various media not least the use of the press, annual report, urban news, frequent press releases; tried to portray reasoned and balanced, judgments and arguments to the public for the policies of the Council as a whole. Therefore I don't accept that there is any attempt within this Council at any time to hide from the public information which is important to the community. On the question of the legal aspects: there is obviously scope for disagreement. Mr. BERNACCHI has expressed dis- agreement in the legal opinions supplied and included in the Secretary, Urban Council's paper. Other legal members of our Star Chamber here have also expressed differences on the legal interpretation by Mr. BERNACCHI. As a layman, I would not like to give a hasty opinion on this matter and therefore, I think, the legal implications of these motions should be referred for proper and detailed study to the Standing Orders and Procedure Select Committee so that there is no question of doubt prevailing that we are, in any way, legally avoiding responsibility. And therefore I would support a proposal to this effect and I would abstain, otherwise, on the general motion.

MR. PETER C. K. CHAN (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, we are discussing the first motion. This motion seems to be fairly reasonable. As a matter of fact, many matters, when discussed in a Standing Com- mittee, would not be made known to the public as if it were discussed in an open meeting. But if we could decide unanimously in a Standing Committee, then we need not discuss in an open meeting with every Member expressing his own views. And this motion is not easy to

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