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Following is a question by Dr Hon Helena Wong and a written reply by the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Tsang Tak-sing, in the Legislative Council today (March 26):
Question:
The Working Group on Civic Education under the Central and Western District Council (C&W DC) held a meeting on the 6th of this month to examine the allocation of $250,000 of public money for taking forward the publicity of the Basic Law and constitutional development. A member of the C&W DC told me that he intended to attend the meeting in order to discharge his duty of monitoring if public money was used appropriately, and his assistant and two journalists also intended to observe the meeting. According to the videos taken by the DC member and his assistant, the Chairman of the Working Group indicated at the beginning of the meeting that it was necessary to hold the meeting in camera and requested the journalists to leave, but the request was refused. The Chairman then moved a motion to oppose the presence of journalists, which was voted upon and passed by the Working Group. The journalists were then immediately evicted from the conference room by security guards, and the DC member was carried away from the conference room by several police officers. Regarding the arrangements for meetings of the committees or working groups under DCs, will the Executive Authorities inform this Council:
(1) which meetings of the committees or working groups allow the public to observe; and the arrangements for the media to cover and observe such meetings;
(2) of the criteria and procedures for determining whether a meeting needs to be held in camera; which meetings need to be held in camera;
(3) of the duties and responsibilities of the District Officers of the district and the officials in attendance at closed meetings;
(4) whether DC members of the district who are not members of the committees or working groups concerned are allowed to sit in on the closed meetings of such committees or working groups; if so, whether the DC members in attendance are required to comply with certain requirements; if there are such requirements, of the details; if in-attendance is not allowed, the reasons for that;
(5) whether a mechanism is in place to handle various kinds of unforeseen incidents during meetings; if so, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; how the authorities assess if the chairmen of the meetings need to call police officers for help;
(6) whether the DC members attending a meeting are authorised to call police officers for help in case of any unforeseen incident during the meeting, and how the DC secretariat assesses the need to call police officers for help; and
(7) of (i) the meetings held in camera, (ii) the agenda items discussed at those meetings, (iii) the percentage of the number of closed meetings in the total number of meetings held, and (iv) the number of closed meetings involving the vetting and approval of funding applications and the percentage of the number of such meetings in the total number of closed meetings held, broken down by DC district, since the beginning of the current DC term?
Reply:
President,
According to Section 68 of the District Councils Ordinance (the Ordinance) (Cap 547), a District Council (DC) may make its own standing orders to regulate its operating procedure and that of its committees. All DCs shall conduct meetings according to the DC Standing Orders they have endorsed. The Government respects DCs' decisions made pursuant to the Ordinance.
The reply to the seven parts of the question is as follows:
(1) According to the DC Standing Orders of the 18 districts, unless the chairman of any committee after consulting the advice of committee members determines otherwise, any meeting of the committee shall be open to the public (including the media).
However, the DC Standing Orders do not stipulate the arrangements for the public to observe meetings of the working groups.
(2) In general, if a committee or working group needs to hold any closed-door meeting, its chairman will make a decision after consulting the advice of the members. The criteria for determining whether a meeting should be held behind closed doors shall be drawn up by the DCs/committees/working groups. Matters discussed in closed-door meetings of individual committees and working groups include, but not limited to, internal administration as well as sensitive information involving tenders and quotations, etc.
(3) If the discussion items fall within the purview of the Home Affairs Department or individual government departments, the District Officer (DO) or representatives of relevant departments will attend the meeting to respond to members' questions. DOs or departmental representatives do not need to attend all meetings of working groups.
(4) According to the DC Standing Orders of all the 18 districts, the committees or working groups may invite any person to attend their meetings where necessary. When a DC member sits in on such a committee or working group meeting, he/she shall abide by the relevant requirements of the DC Standing Orders.
(5)&(6) According to the DC Standing Orders of all the 18 districts, if a person attending or sitting in on the meeting misbehaves in such a way as to disrupt the conduct of the meeting, the chairman may issue warnings to that person. The chairman may order the person to leave the place of the meeting if the person persists in his or her misbehaviour despite warnings. At the chairman's request, the DC Secretariat will take appropriate actions and may, where necessary, ask security guards to come to the place of the meeting to assist in maintaining order, in order to ensure that the meeting is to be conducted smoothly.
It is a DC member's personal decision to call for the assistance of Police officers if he/she feels threatened or disturbed.
(7) According to the Secretariats, from the commencement of the current DC term (i.e. from January 1, 2012) to March 14, 2014, closed-door meetings were conducted in 3 committees and 21 working groups of the 18 DCs. Items of discussion mainly involved issues of internal administration of respective DCs, tenders and quotations, etc. There are no statistics on the percentage of closed-door meetings in the total number of meetings, or the number and percentage of closed-door meetings dealing with examination of funding applications in the total number of closed-door meetings.
Ends/Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Issued at HKT 12:05
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