A letter sent by James Middleton of Clear The Air to competition@cedb.gov.hk in response to the Views Sought On Competition Law article posted on the Business and Finance news.gov.hk site.
Dear Sir,
Consultation on Competition Law – we read that the current proposals include the usual Government let out.
“Government and statutory bodies exempt from law”
No Government should be and must never be above the Law.
They should be the example, not the exemption.The Government should ensure its laws and policies are fair and just before enacting them.
If they enact policies which are unfair and anti competitive they should be liable to to tasked accordingly. The same applies to the Race Discrimination laws where they sought to exclude Government from liability and which has been queried on high from afar as well as by local legislators.A perfect example is the current debacle created by Government to appease the Liberal party with the smoking exemptions for ‘Qualified Premises’.
In the UK in the lead up to their smoking ban last year, the House of Commons report discussed the possible options by way of allowing exemptions to the new laws for specific premises . The public and the Catering Trade unanimously agreed that a level playing field was required whereby all licensed premises would be subject to the ban.
In Hong Kong the Government has unfairly allowed exemptions to premises choosing to bar the entry of U-18s to the licensed premises. This has created an unfair competition between those premises choosing to follow the new anti smoking laws here and those who took the freely available exemption. The proposed use of “A cross-sector competition law to prohibit conduct that reduces competition substantially;” seems prima facie already to have been broken in this example.
The Government should be held responsible for instigating such an unfair trading advantage whilst at the same time ignoring the workers who are being killed by passive smoke. They have usurped their Duty of Care to their workforce and should be held accountable, not exempt from current and any future laws they intend to mess with to suit political compliance.
yours faithfully,
James Middleton
Clear the Air
www.cleartheair.org.hk