New-town fight raises intriguing legal issue

Lawmaker Wong Yuk-man's legal challenge to a decision to fund preliminary work on new towns in the New Territories will not only put a hot issue under the legal spotlight; it will also pose interesting legal questions.

That is because Wong's judicial review application names both the legislature's Finance Committee and its chairman Ng Leung-sing as respondents - despite the fact the committee is not a separate legal entity.

Wong said he named the committee "because it was the body which passed the vote" but according to A Companion to the History, Rules and Practices of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, published by Legco, legal proceedings "may only be taken by naming the members of the council [or committee] … as respondents".

The Legco Secretariat declined to comment, but similar cases have seen committee members named individually.

Wong's argument centres on a June 27 meeting, at which committee members voted 29-2 to back a HK$340 million government request to move ahead with planning the new towns at Kwu Tong North and Fanling North. He will argue that Ng was wrong to bar his request to table some 14,000 motions in an attempted filibuster, and wants the vote quashed.

The case raised interesting questions, according to a person familiar with legal proceedings involving Legco.