I am extremely pleased to welcome such a distinguished group of housing professionals from Hong Kong and around the world and to have this opportunity to address you. In our own case, where as Rosanna said, housing six million people in Hong Kong within a small territory.

During this conference, you will have the opportunity to discuss questions and issues for housing today against the backdrop of what, without false modesty for Hong Kong, and without any claim for myself, is truly one of the most remarkable achievements in housing anywhere in the world. I'd like to pay a particular tribute today to Rosanna and the Housing Authority for all that they have done and continue to do.

Consider, the pictures told the story, where we started from. The very first annual report on Hong Kong, submitted to the Colonial Office in 1844, described "the straggling town of Victoria, which stretches along the water's edge for nearly four miles, although only comprising about 60 European style houses and a number of Chinese huts and bazaars", and observed that "abrupt precipices, and deep rocky ravines, will ever prevent the formation at Victoria of any concentrated town, adapted for mutual protection, cleanliness and comfort". The report also noted that "Hong Kong cannot be said to possess any vegetation; ..... after the heavy rains of May, June and July, the hills assume somewhat of a greenish tinge, like a decayed Stilton cheese".

Well, as you may have noticed, things have changed a bit since then.

Through sound planning, ambitious engineering, and above all by the sheer endeavour of this extraordinary community, over six million people have been housed within this small territory. Since so much of the territory is rocky hills, the habitations have been constrained mostly to the coast of Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon peninsula and to the valleys and reclaimed bays of the New Territories, giving us in some areas the highest population densities in the world.

That population has not grown through normal progression, but has for the most part come in waves of refugees from events over the border. There was a great surge in the 20's and 30's, but that ebbed in the terrible conditions of 1941-45. Thereafter, Hong Kong had to rebuild itself and to provide home and shelter to wave upon wave of refugees in the late 40's, in the mid 50's, in the early 60's and again in the mid 70's. Refugees are no longer a major source of addition to the population, but for family reunion and through normal migration channels, 150 people enter Hong Kong from China every day now, adding to a demand for housing that stems as well from natural increases in population, from changing expectations arising from growing wealth, and from emigrants returning to Hong Kong from abroad.

Reflecting the desperate need to get a roof over people's heads in the 50's and 60's, fully half of the population in Hong Kong today lives in publicly subsidised housing, either in our 660,000 rental flats or one of the 200,000 flats sold at a subsidy to the less well off. That has been a massive investment in social equity, an investment that has helped to underwrite Hong Kong's success in many other areas.

But the nature of that investment has changed dramatically. From the 1950's preoccupation with giving homes to as many as possible as quickly as possible with limited funds, we have moved steadily towards providing better housing : not just roofs over heads, but decent homes to live in. That has meant paying attention to the quality of construction, the quality of management and to the quality of the environment. On that last point, it is worth reflecting that the barren hills of 150 years ago are now for the most part covered in woodland, and that the bare concrete resettlement estates of the 1950's have been replaced by buildings of more pleasing aspect, laid out among ever more greenery, gardens and public facilities. That has been achieved despite the most intense demands for space from people, industry, business and traffic.

Despite the pressures and the problems, Hong Kong is an example that it is possible to make improvements, to create a better quality of urban life. Building a city is not just about cramming in more people, more jobs, more production. If our cities are to have value, if they are to last, we must seek to create communities in which people want to live, to which they want to contribute.

My experience in Hong Kong has reinforced two convictions I have about the way in which we build our cities. First, I am convinced that the processes through which we build, run and rebuild our cities must take more account of their impacts on our environment. We must look at the impacts as a whole; consider the effects on the health of the individual citizen, and we must enhance the possibilities of the families of today's young men and women being able to live happily and sustainably in a decent environment.

My second conviction is that increasing wealth, improving education, greater access to information and foreign travel don't just create demands, they also create opportunities. Certainly these processes do create greater expectations, greater questioning of policy, but they do also give us the resources, both financial and human to respond to those expectations, to debate and settle the questions. Developing the processes of decision making so that the people for whom policies are being made, funds allocated, projects built have the opportunity to contribute their ideas, to be partners in the process, is ever more important if we are to secure consent to community programmes, whether for housing or health, education or the environment. People who are better informed, and have the security of decent wages, housing and services are naturally interested and able to contribute to decisions over housing, education or urban services, and they have the means to help implement those decisions. It greatly strengthens and stabilises society when they are given the opportunity to do so.

Hong Kong and its housing programmes cannot be held up as the best conceivable object lesson in how to address these two issues of the environment or public participation, though it can take good marks for effort on both counts. The remarkable successes of our public housing programme have themselves created problems that we have to address today and in years to come. Paradoxically in this bastion of free markets, the public sector has become so large that it has had undoubtedly distorting effects upon the private sector housing market. Large public bureaucracies, however laudable their aims, face a constant struggle to respond to the needs of their customers today and prepare for the new conditions of tomorrow, rather than simply rolling forward yesterday's programmes for which they were set up. That struggle is one which I am delighted to see the Hong Kong Housing Authority engaging in with considerable honesty and considerable success over the last few years, and I'm sure that the members will be sharing some of their experiences on that front with those of you visiting from abroad.

Above all, we need to find ways to provide incentive for public tenants who have been able to use the security given by low cost housing to improve their family resources to become participants, rather than dependants of the community: to find ways to help them acquire a share in the city through ownership, and to focus public support where it is truly needed, on those still in poverty, those still poorly housed, too many of them and the group whom we must do everything to help and to rehouse.

This conference comes at an opportune time for us in Hong Kong. Recognising the need to develop our housing system to respond better to the changing conditions of our society in the years ahead, we are conducting a comprehensive review of our housing strategy for the next decade. The wealth of experience that this gathering has brought together will provide an excellent sounding board for our ideas, an ideal opportunity to learn from those who are grappling with similar issues and who have already begun to develop stimulating new policies and practices to address them.

I am confident that the exchange of views at this conference will help all of us to find better means of approaching the key issues that face us, as cities around the world prepare to build the houses that will be needed in the next century; houses to give yet more millions of people a decent home; rehousing and redevelopment needed so that we can tackle requirements for urban renewal and slum clearance; the homes needed as the foundation for lively, sustainable communities for our citizens.

Some of you may know that in a previous incarnation I was a politician. And looking back on those years, I think that there is no question at all that the issue which caused me most concern and gave me most satisfaction was housing. As an ordinary constituency member of parliament, and I would guess that every Legislative councillor some of whom are here today would tell you the same thing. ....problems with inadequate accommodation for growing families, problems of housing for special needs. Problems of relating income to housing costs. Problems of health sometimes associated with bad housing. I also had responsibility for housing in two of my ministerial posts, most recently as Secretary for the Environment in the United Kingdom. But my first job as a minister involved me in having responsibility for housing in Northern Ireland.

There it was perfectly clear that the quality and quantity of decent housing were major factors in restoring stability in a shattered and divided community. I had great pleasure the other day in returning to Northern Ireland and seeing some of the housing that we built almost ten years ago and seeing the importance of building quality housing for people in the public sector and the importance of helping people in the public sector move in the private sector when they can afford to do so. I suspect that one of the great pleasures that all of you involve in housing administration have, not an achievement which everybody in public administration can look to, not perhaps as tangible than achievements in other sectors. I guess one of the great pleasures for you in being able to go and see the housing which you have been responsible for and see how it transforms the lives of ordinary decent men and women and their families. Here too, decent housing have been absolutely crucial to the social stability and to the prosperity of the community. How could Hong Kong have conceivably become such a prosperous and successful place if we have not been able to provide the stability which a decent roof over people's heads means.

Look at our health statistics today. In a community which only 40 years ago perhaps less was a victim of epidemic disease, compare our health indicators with those in OECD countries. Look at the fact that child health statistics, child mortality statistics are better than those OECD countries, the majority of them. Look at the fact that our longevity statistics are better than those in most OECD countries. Something which I hope oblige the Governor as well. And just ask yourselves the question how much of that is because of improvements of housing. A lot of it of course because of improvements in the delivery of health services. But a great deal stems from improving the quality of the housing that people live in. Now success, success in achieving some of those basic objectives throws up new problems. And all of you will know who are in housing that the most unexpected thing you ever receive is an expression of gratitude. As soon as you achieve one objective you realise that there are new problems, new challenges, new hills to climb. But each time you climb a hill, what you can know is that you have given more families the chance of a decent live, more children the chance of a decent opportunity to do as well as their talents allow.

I am delighted that I have been able to talk to all of you who work in such an important field. I think all of us in Hong Kong look forward to your conference and hope that you will be able to help us in the coming hours and days in finding new and imaginative solutions to some of the problems that we are keen to tackle with the same energy and resolve that we have tackled the problems of the last decades. Thank you very much.