Opinion | Hong Kong doesn’t need lawmakers who have to be reminded to do their job

Amid a budget crisis and questions over government costs, the fact rules are needed to get legislators to turn up and vote is astonishing

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Lawmakers listen as Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po presents the annual budget for 2025-26 on February 26. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:30am, 5 May 2025Updated: 10:55am, 5 May 2025

Every now and then, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council reminds us of grade school. Just like in a school year, lawmakers have historically enjoyed a summer recess – of two to three months at the end of July – before beginning the next legislative year in October.

After the 2021 overhaul of the electoral system, however, Legco elections were moved from September to December, which meant the legislative year started in January instead.

To ensure that school could still be out for the summer, lawmakers voted in 2023 to abolish a rule of procedure requiring that two consecutive meetings are not held more than six weeks apart in the same legislative year. Summer was saved – by lawmakers undoing the rules.

There has been noise over the prolonged summer “break” our honourable legislators enjoy. Most notably in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Leung Chun-ying, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the city’s former chief executive, challenged the need for a Legco recess when so much needed to be done.

In 2022, former lawmaker Wong Kwok-hing urged the chief executive to cancel the recess altogether. In 2023, commentator Chris Wat Wing-yin called the arrangement ridiculous and wondered why not a single member of the expanded 90-person Legco had proposed its cancellation.

Every time the subject is brought up, lawmakers react with indignance. It’s not a break from work but an adjournment of meetings, they say; they don’t stop working because there are other meetings and events to attend and people to meet; and, some of these people they need to meet require overseas travel as lawmakers work to tell good stories of Hong Kong, they also say.