Patten: NPC court remarks 'breach Joint Declaration'

Lord Patten said Britain had a responsibility to speak out as a signatory to the Joint Declaration. Photo: AFP

Hong Kong's last colonial-era governor, Lord Chris Patten, has described a claim from Beijing that only the central government can declare the SAR's laws unconstitutional as a breach of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.



In a letter to Britain's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, Patten said remarks from the legislative affairs commission of the National People's Congress standing committee criticising a ruling of Hong Kong's High Court risked undermining judicial independence and the rule of law.



Patten said it was "of extreme concern" that the NPC made a statement that was "in complete breach of Article 3(3) of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which states that: 'The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication'".



He urged Raab to take action to put pressure on Beijing.



"As a signatory to the Joint Declaration, Britain has a responsibility to speak out. I therefore urge you to make a strong public statement on this as soon as possible, and to consider what measures could be taken in response to breaches of the Joint Declaration," he wrote.



On Tuesday, the commission's spokesman declared that the High Court had overstepped its authority in ruling that a ban on masks at unauthorised protests, implemented by the administration under emergency powers last month, was unconstitutional.



The commission said the power to declare whether a law was constitutional was a matter for the standing committee alone, and that the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, the instrument used to make the law, had been declared constitutional at the time of the 1997 handover.