§ Lord Lester of Herne Hillasked Her Majesty's Government:
What procedures are envisaged to ensure implementation of Article 39 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China in view of the statement in that article that the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as applied to Hong Kong "shall remain in force" after 1997.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey)The Basic Law, promulgated by China's National People's Congress in 1990, will replace the Letters Patent as Hong Kong's constitutional document when it comes into effect on 1 July 1997. It will entrench the ICCPR and the ICESCR as applied to Hong Kong through Article 39.
Hong Kong's Bill of Rights Ordinance, which fully reflects the provisions of the ICCPR as applied to Hong Kong, provides the vehicle for substantive rights to be justiciable in Hong Kong.
The ICESCR contains a number of objectives which States Party are committed to achieving. It does not define certain minimum rights of the individual as the ICCPR does. For this reason, no States Party have incorporated the objectives set out in the ICESCR in domestic law. For Hong Kong after 1 July 1997, as for States Party, the primary obligation will be to achieve progressively the realisation of the objectives of the ICESCR.