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Following is the speech by the Secretary for Justice, Ms Elsie Leung in moving the Resumption of the Second Reading Debate of the Adaptation of Laws (No. 12) Bill 1998 in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):

Madam President,

On 6 January 1999, I introduced the Adaptation of Laws (No. 12) Bill 1998 into this Council. The main purpose of the Bill is to adapt the provisions of seven Ordinances to bring them into conformity with the Basic Law and with the status of Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

I am grateful to the Honourable Margaret Ng, the Chairman of the Bills Committee, and to the members of the Committee, for their thorough consideration of the Bill. We have carefully considered the views of the members and have incorporated their helpful suggestions into the Committee Stage Amendments which I shall move later this afternoon.

I shall move certain amendments to Schedule 2 under Clause 3 of the Bill by deleting "Government" and substituting 'HKSAR' in the adaptation of the term 'Crown' in the context of the Crown being a party in criminal proceedings. Given that the Department of Justice, and not the SAR Government, controls prosecutions, free from any interference, it is considered that 'HKSAR' is a more appropriate term than 'Government' in this context.

Although the Criminal Procedure Ordinance is one of the Ordinances covered by this Bill, it was decided not to adapt section 9(3) of that Ordinance. This was because section 9(3) contains a reference to 'treason or misprision of treason'. As this has implications for Article 23 of the Basic Law, the Administration proposes to deal with its adaptation in a separate exercise. This was explained to the Bills Committee, which agreed with that approach.

Madam President, subject to the amendments that I shall move, I commend this Bill to Honourable Members for passage into law.

End/Wednesday, July 7, 1999

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