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Lady Hale quits Hong Kong court as China tightens grip

Baroness Hale.
The former Supreme Court president says there are question marks about the new security law
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

Baroness Hale of Richmond, the first female president of the Supreme Court, will quit Hong Kong’s top court as concern grows about the role of UK judges in the territory.

She will be the first to leave the bench since Beijing imposed draconian security laws on the former British colony.

Members of the judiciary, who sit on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal because of Britain’s historical links with the territory, were criticised for giving a veneer of respectability to the legal system there in the wake of the clampdown on human rights. The security law is seen as a wholesale breach of the 1997 handover agreement between London and Beijing.

Hale said: “The jury is out on how they will be able to operate the new national security law. There are all sorts of question marks up in the air.”

Other British judicial figures on the bench include the president of the Supreme Court, Lord Reed of Allemuir, as well as former presidents Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury and Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. Lord Sumption, another former Supreme Court judge, is also on the Hong Kong bench.

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Hale — who was president of the Supreme Court for three years until she retired at the beginning of last year — confirmed to an online conference yesterday that her first term as an overseas judge on the Hong Kong court would end in July.

It was expected that the Hong Kong authorities would offer her another stint, but she said: “I don’t wish to be reappointed.”

The 76-year-old, who delivered the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2019 that Boris Johnson had unlawfully asked the Queen to prorogue parliament as MPs clashed over Brexit, added that her main reason for quitting was that in the present circumstances she could not “foresee a time when I would get on a plane to go to Hong Kong”.

Hale acknowledged that there were serious concerns about the national security law, but argued that the remaining foreign judges were “keeping an eye on what’s going on there”.

After she steps down, there will be nine British judges on the Hong Kong court, which took the place of the Privy Council in London after 1997.

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