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Sir Colin Shepherd: Did the right hon. Gentleman get the impression from his discussions in Beijing that that essential point was understood by the Chinese?
Mr. Cook: Those with whom I have had discussions recognise that the rule of law is important, and understand many of the points that I have made about that being one ingredient of the commercial success of Hong Kong. That is why, a year ago, one Chinese leader produced the celebrated metaphor of the teapot that will give them the right flavour of tea only if they do not scrub it out too clean when they get it in their hands.
I think that there must be some nervousness about whether the Chinese Government have enough experience of operating in that environment to respect the nuances that make that environment such a success. That is why it is so important that we leave in place legal and political structures which will protect the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong; and that those structures be entrenched so that they can survive after we go.
Time is now running out. The Foreign Secretary gave us a resume of the history of negotiations, going back to 1984. Lady Thatcher can quite properly claim parentage of the 1984 joint declaration. Some of the difficulties that we have encountered in the negotiations since 1984 are due to the central ambiguity in that declaration, which left China with the clear impression that, in 1997, it was going to receive Hong Kong as it was in 1984. China was encouraged in that belief by references in the joint declaration to the system remaining unchanged. The United Kingdom, rightly and properly, has maintained that Hong Kong could not be preserved in ice for 13 years, and that, after the events of Tiananmen square, there was powerful pressure for change.
Our case for the legitimate legal basis of such change has been partly clouded by different interpretations of what was meant in the joint declaration. It is certainly fitting that Lady Thatcher should intend to be present on 30 June to witness the fruits of her handiwork. It is a fact of political life that this Foreign Secretary may not be there on 30 June as the representative of the British Government--I do not wish to speculate, but it is a possibility.
May I therefore, for the avoidance of doubt, record the fact that, if there is an election here before 30 June--I hope that that is a fairly safe speculation--and if it does
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If it should happen that the Government leave office before the handover ceremony, they cannot leave behind their responsibility for what they have left in place. We shall indeed hold them responsible for that arrangement, and, in the pursuit of holding them responsible, there will be two areas of unfinished business which the House would expect them to resolve over the coming months.
I intend to raise a number of questions as I discuss those two items of unfinished business. If they cannot be answered in the course of this debate, I issue an open invitation to both Ministers who are present to write to me with the answers once they have had time to reflect. Nevertheless, the questions I want to ask are questions to which both I and the House are entitled to answers.
The first area of unfinished business relates to the Legislative Council, about which there were several exchanges while the Foreign Secretary was speaking. The joint declaration and the Basic Law envisaged a through train for the Legislative Council, elected under British sovereignty, which would continue to serve after transfer to Chinese sovereignty. That through train was important as a symbol of continuity, and also as a demonstration that democratic institutions would survive the transfer of sovereignty. No issue, however, has contributed more to the gulf between Governor Patten and the Chinese Government than the conduct of negotiations on LegCo.
Governor Patten announced his arrangements for the new LegCo before he had ever visited Beijing. When Beijing refused to agree to those proposals, he proceeded without Beijing's agreement. Having discussed the history of these matters with people in Hong Kong, I surmise that a calculated gamble was taken. The idea was that, if Governor Patten forged ahead with the changes for the new LegCo, China would eventually be forced to come along in the slipstream.
The Foreign Secretary will be aware that a succession of former ambassadors to China have expressed their anxiety that that was a naive misreading of Chinese political reality. Their misgivings have proved correct. China has persisted in refusing to recognise a LegCo the arrangements for which were not negotiated with China, and the Chinese are now insisting on derailing the through train.
One reason why China holds strong views on this point is that the Chinese believed that they already had an agreement on the basis for elections to the Legislative Council, and that that agreement was enshrined in letters exchanged between the Government of China and the Foreign Secretary's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd). Those letters were exchanged in January and February of 1990, and set out the basis for the election of functional Members by an electoral college of 800 people. Those arrangements were then superseded in October 1992 by Governor Patten's proposal to increase the number of functional Members, and to have them directly elected by individuals.
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I want to ask the Foreign Secretary a direct question: were the letters exchanged between the Government of China and the right hon. Member for Witney shown to Governor Patten before he announced quite different arrangements? If they were shown to him, why did he repudiate them without warning Beijing? If they were not shown to him, how can the Foreign Office excuse its failure to share with the Governor, at a time when it knew that he was working on arrangements for LegCo, the exchanges of letters that it had had on this very point with the Government of China?
Meanwhile, it is the people of Hong Kong who face the consequences of the failure of the gamble. China intends to appoint a provisional Legislative Council; "appoint" is the correct term--there is a committee of selection, but the committee of selection is in turn selected by the Government of China. In the one vote that has been held so far, the appointees were split 399 to 1, which hardly argues for an immense plurality of views in the committee of selection.
There is no provision in the joint declaration or the Basic Law for the Government of China to appoint a provisional LegCo. The Foreign Secretary was eloquent in denouncing China's intention to appoint one. China should be left in no doubt that that denunciation is fully endorsed by all parties in this Chamber.
But the House did not need to hear from the Foreign Secretary that China was wrong to take such a step. What the House needed to hear from him was what the Government are going to do if China does take the step. If I understood the Foreign Secretary's response to interventions correctly, he suggested that it was not yet clear that this will happen. I do not think it could be clearer. The Government of China have even set out the timetable in which it is going to happen. By 21 December, selection of the new provisional LegCo will have been completed.
So when we reach the winding-up speeches today, the House, I think, will be entitled to hear from the Minister who replies not more denunciations of what China intends to do but a clear statement of the Government's strategy for when China carries out what it has clearly said it intends to do.
After all, if there was indeed a gamble that China would follow in the slipstream of Governor Patten's statement, there must have been a contingency plan for the eventuality that the gamble might fail. What was it? Is it really true that the Government have come this far without knowing what they intend to do if the Chinese persist in what they have made it perfectly plain they intend to do?
Should China appoint this provisional LegCo, it will damage not just the rights of the people of Hong Kong but China's image in the world. During my discussions in Beijing, I got the clear impression that China's leaders have not yet grasped that the removal of the elected LegCo on the night of the handover of sovereignty will dominate international reporting of the event. That will certainly damage China's image abroad; but it will also damage the British Government's reputation and the reputation of this House, because it will provide
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Mr. David Howell:
I wholly agree with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, and have much sympathy with the way in which he is putting it, but is not the situation even worse than his description? The body will exist, will apparently meet in the territory, and will even examine laws, amendments and reforms. So we will have a sort of crazy dual system, a parallel legislature, which puts a torpedo through the usual concepts of the rule of law.
Mr. Cook:
The right hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. The Government of China have already--to be fair to them, they are always clear about their intentions--made it perfectly clear that they cannot accept the Bill of Rights ordinance, and intend to bring forward proposals to amend it. I believe that it would be doubly unsatisfactory if such measures were brought before an appointed Legislative Council.
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