ENG-1982 — Page 23

10

REVIEW

The Governor's duties and responsibilities are extensive; his job is hard; his days perforce are full, some say overfull. Though his ultimate responsibility remains, time alone would prevent him personally overseeing the implementation of policy, or even the conception, still less the development of more than a tithe of the new policies demanded each year by Hong Kong's increasing sophistication. So, whilst he retains the ultimate direction of affairs, decides priorities and exerts the major influence over the most important initiatives and innovations, to the Civil Service are delegated the rest of his responsibilities.

The Chief Secretary, the head of the Civil Service and chief executive of the Hong Kong Government, is responsible to the Governor for the formulation and the efficient execution of all save financial or economic policy, these being the responsibility of the Financial Secretary. He plays personally a large part in policy formulation; most files from departmental or branch heads seeking gubernatorial decision are routed via him; he is, as it were, Hong Kong's Chief Minister. Only he, the Financial Secretary and the Attorney General have, by convention, the right of direct personal access to the Governor.

The conventional distinction in other jurisdictions between politicians, initiating and publicising policy, and anonymous civil servants loyally accepting and administering but not making that policy, does not and cannot exist in Hong Kong. But, within the Civil Service, the same strict functional division into policy-makers and executive administrators was introduced in 1972, after the management consultants, McKinsey and Company, had been hired and had advised the Government.

Today the Government is organised into 11 policy-formulating branches – Education, Housing, Health and Welfare, Security, Transport and the like, each headed by a Secretary – and into 55 executive departments, ranging alphabetically from Agriculture and Fisheries, through Education, Fire Services, Industry, Labour, Medical and Health, and Trade, to Urban Services. The head of each department reports for policy guidance to his Branch Secretary, but is responsible for the implementation in his own field of approved govern- ment policy. It is perhaps the grey areas on the boundaries which lead Secretaries and their heads of department sometimes to be seen in such a state of healthy, but hopefully creative, tension.

Secretaries act as both Minister, publicly announcing and discussing policy, and as a Permanent Under-Secretary, in day-to-day charge of all the public servants working in their department. Each surveys his field, responsible for initiating new policies to suit the changing times. He it is who must refine and hone the first ideas; consult within the Government and the community and take account of their views; take expert advice from home or abroad; polish the final result until it is revealed shining brightly on the pages of its ExCo paper; and await, sometimes in nervous trepidation, the decision of Executive Council. Most too are members of the Legislative Council and there introduce their Bills, reply to the speeches and criticism of the Unofficials, and at question time answer their sometimes probing questions.

The Executive Council

On top of the government's consultative machinery stands ExCo, as the Council is universally called, Hong Kong's equivalent of the Cabinet. Its place in the constitutional scheme is critical. The requirement in the Letters Patent to seek its advice is the principal curb on what otherwise would be the almost unlimited power of the Governor in some fields. Lacking an electoral mandate, it is its presence and composition, more than all else, which enables the administration to govern with the consent, and usually the approval, of the people.