I refer to the letter from Mark Peaker (“With Teresa Cheng, has Carrie Lam’s pledge to connect with Hong Kong come undone?”, December 31) who says Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah’s decision to close the file on former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying undermines faith in the judiciary and that the behaviour of Cheng as secretary for justice beggars belief.

To begin with, the chief executive must know or ought to have known how wrong it was to have appointed Cheng as justice secretary while allowing her to work on six arbitration cases  alongside her duties as Secretary for Justice. Such an appointment would appear to condone conflict of interest in the eyes of the public. Clearly, Lam had no idea of the usual practice whereby if Cheng wanted the justice secretary’s job, she should have handed over her existing cases to other solicitors. One wonders how our secretary for justice fills in her time sheet on her public and private work.

Moving on to Cheng’s ignorance of the existence of illegal structures at the property she was buying in an upmarket area, this is the most ludicrous suggestion, as she ought to have known that her own solicitors would have the approved plans from the Land Registry to show which structures were not part of the approved plans.