Govt Bulldozing Through Rail Bill: Lawmakers

A group of opposition lawmakers has accused the government of bulldozing its controversial West Kowloon Station plans through Legco, claiming the administration is interfering with the work of the legislature.

This comes after Transport Secretary Frank Chan sent a letter to New People's Party legislator Regina Ip, who chairs the bills committee scrutinising planned legislation for the station arrangements, asking her to speed up the vetting process.

Ip has since said that she wants the discussions to be wrapped up by May 7 and if lawmakers still have issues they want to raise, they can just put them to her or the committee's vice chairman, Horace Cheung.

Civic Party lawmaker Tanya Chan described the government's intervention, and Ip's compliance, as "absolutely not acceptable and unconstitutional", adding that it is unfair to prevent lawmakers from doing their jobs.

"It is the government who is trying to compress the time for legislators to scrutinise the bill and it seems Regina Ip is helping the government to suppress the time for discussion," the lawmaker said, adding that she would be writing to Chief Executive Carrie Lam to complain.

The Transport Secretary denied interfering with the work of the Legislative Council, but warned that time is running out to pass the legislation needed to allow mainland law enforcement agents to operate at the West Kowloon high-speed rail terminus.

"We are not exerting any pressure on the legislature but we do have a duty of care of public interest. And also we need to ensure, by all possible and reasonable measures, to enable the express rail to start operating by September 8," Frank Chan said.

Meanwhile, Ip said she was merely following long-standing rules in wrapping up scrutiny of a bill within three months, and said there is no question of her succumbing to any government pressure.

"We have to ensure that this bill is passed before the summer recess so that co-location can be implemented when the XRL starts running in September. So all of us have a tremendous responsibility to exercise effective time management control," Ip said.

While the government says giving the mainland control of much of the rail station will add to the convenience of the new cross-border line for passengers, critics say this will amount to ceding land to the mainland and will breach the Basic Law.