Information source: Departmental Review - "Department of Justice 2008"

Most major public policies are implemented through legislation. The task of keeping pace with the demands of a crowded legislative timetable falls on the Law Drafting Division which is responsible for drafting all legislation, both Ordinances and subsidiary legislation (such as rules and regulations), proposed by the Government. It also vets all non-Government Bills and all subsidiary legislation put forward by non-Government bodies to make sure that they comply with current drafting practice on format and style. The division is also responsible for ensuring that the published version of Hong Kong's legislation is up to date.

Legislation

Where a Government proposal for new legislation is put forward, the drafting counsel will need to liaise with those making the proposal to gain a thorough understanding of the background and intended effect of the proposal. The drafting counsel must also analyse the drafting instructions carefully to ensure that the proposal is conceptually sound and legally effective. "Drafting instructions" refers to the document prepared for the draftsman by the responsible Government policy bureau which sets out the background to the proposal and what the bureau wishes to achieve with the new legislation. The drafting instructions also specify which existing provisions will need to be amended in order to achieve that end.

After the proposed legislation is drafted, the drafting counsel assists in steering it through the legislative process. In the case of Government Bills and subsidiary legislation to be made by the Chief Executive, the legislation will be submitted to the Executive Council for consideration. Drafting counsel attend the Executive Council meetings to provide advice on general legal issues and on questions relating to drafting.

Usually, a Bills Committee (made up of members of the Legislative Council with an interest in the particular policy area or the subject of the bill) will be established to consider a Bill after it has been introduced into the Legislative Council. The drafting counsel attends the Bills Committee meetings to advise on general legal issues and on drafting-related questions. He or she also drafts all committee stage amendments (that is, changes to the Bill arising from deliberations at the Bills Committee stage) which are proposed, or agreed to, by the Government. These amendments are considered and decided upon before the Bill is put to the vote for its final reading in the Legislative Council meeting. Likewise, if an item of subsidiary legislation should be referred to a sub-committee after it has been laid on the table of the Legislative Council, the drafting counsel will attend the sub-committee meetings and draft any amendments which the Government may require.

Apart from drafting legislation for policies initiated by the Government, the division also undertakes any drafting work necessary to apply to Hong Kong relevant national laws of the PRC (that is, those listed in Annex III to the Basic Law), including the English translations of those laws.

Hong Kong's legislation is fully bilingual, with all new legislation being drafted and enacted in both Chinese and English. Both language versions of a piece of legislation are equally authentic, and drafting counsel must therefore ensure that the text in each language bears the same meaning and correctly reflects the policy intention.

Compilation and publication of laws

Hong Kong's legislation is published in both a hard copy loose-leaf edition and in electronic form freely available over the internet. For the hard copy version, which contains the bilingual texts of all Ordinances and subsidiary legislation, periodic issues of new or replacement pages incorporating new legislation or amendments to the texts are sent to subscribers, who need only substitute them for the outdated pages. The hard copy version now comprises 44 volumes, containing over 670 Ordinances and 1,330 items of subsidiary legislation. Volume 1 of the loose-leaf edition includes for reference the Basic Law and the national laws that apply to Hong Kong, as well as other constitutional instruments and related decisions.

The on-line legislation database, known as the Bilingual Laws Information System (BLIS), is available free to the public on the internet either directly at www.legislation.gov.hk or through the department's homepage at www.doj.gov.hk. In addition to providing access to the current legislation of Hong Kong, the database also allows the public to retrieve the previous version of any statutory provision which has been repealed or amended since 1 July 1997. A marker placed against a section heading alerts the reader to the fact that that provision has been amended or repealed (and the amendment or repeal has taken effect) but the changes have not yet been incorporated in the text of the database. Changes to the text of the database are usually made within two to three weeks of the commencement of the amendment or repeal.

Performance indicators

For many years, the division has measured its workload largely by reference to the volume of legislation, as represented by the number of pages of legislation published in the Gazette. That provided a realistic reflection of the division's workload in the days when enacted legislation differed little from the form in which it was first published in the Gazette as a Bill, and when legislation was straightforward. Increasingly, however, legislation is now of a more complex nature, and the draftsman has become more involved at the initial stages of formulating a legislative scheme, as well as participating in the legislative process as the Bill progresses to enactment.

To reflect the changed role of drafting counsel, new performance indicators have been developed in addition to the ones that the division has been using for years. The statistics compiled under the various indicators (shown in the statistics section) offer a clearer view of the different facets of the legislative drafting work undertaken by the division.