19/09/2019 HCMP2801/2015 THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG v. HONG KONG COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING CO LTD AND ANOTHER The conduct of the meetings of the Council is however an internal matter for the Council itself. The Council has the power to regulate its own procedure. The Code and the evidence show that its meetings have been conducted on the basis of confidentiality and collective responsibility. I do not think that the argument is sufficient to establish summarily at this interlocutory stage that the recordings should be made public in order to provide reasons for the decision or in the name of openness. 85. The third point mentioned above is grounded in the established rule that there is no confidence in iniquity — the courts do not enforce a right to confidence wrongdoing when to may be do so would included be to “anti-social cover up wrongdoing. conduct” in the By sense of “activities which, whilst not in breach of the law, are seriously contrary to the public interest”: Francome v Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd [1984] 1 WLR 892, 895-896. 86. If there was indeed some misconduct that would be revealed by disclosure and not otherwise, it might well be that the public interest in confidentiality had to yield to the public interest of exposure. This case is special in that it is not known exactly what the audio recording stated (except those parts that have already gone into the public domain). Nevertheless the balancing exercise is a practical one grounded in reality, taking into account what would be likely to be revealed by the disclosure of materials not already in the public domain. the 29 September 2015 Judging by what Mr Billy Fung divulged after Meeting as stated above, which can for present purposes be taken to be the comments he considered objectionable enough to mention, recording it could be argued that there is little else objectionable whose has not already been disclosed. It is far from obvious that disclosure of the remainder of the recording would reveal some anti-social conduct in the sense described above. In other words, given the revelations of recordings already made, the expectation that further disclosure could reveal the alleged or other wrongdoing, and hence the public interest in further disclosure, is correspondingly reduced. saying that there was wrongdoing (I should not be taken to be revealed in the parts of the recording disclosed — the question simply does not arise for decision.) https: //legalref.judiciary.hk/Irs/common/ju/ju_frame.jsp? DIS=101619&currpage=T 29/33