1980 for public consultations on reforming local administration in Hong Kong. The Green Paper recommended that elections by popular vote be introduced to return some members of the newly-established District Boards and unofficial members of the Urban Council. The White Paper: District Administration in Hong Kong of January 1981 further cemented the government's will to introduce elections by popular vote. Proposals in the White Paper were implemented between 1982 and 1983, during which elections to the District Boards and Urban Council were held. Months before the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed which the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China governments agreed on handing over Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule in 1997, the Green Paper: the Further Development of Representative Government in Hong Kong was published in July 1984. The Green Paper cemented first large-scale constitutional reform in developing a representative government during the British rule. The Green Paper suggested the introduction of indirect election in two stages in 1985 and 1988 to the unofficial members of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) by an electoral college consisting of Members of the Urban Council of Hong Kong, the new Regional Council to be established in 1986, and District Boards and functional groups or functional constituencies. The first Legislative Council elections, electing 24 unofficial members of LegCo, was held in September 1985. Popular elections to the legislature Consultations on electoral reform followed the 1985 electoral reform. In the White Paper: the Further Development of Representative Government in Hong Kong of 1984, the idea of direct election was suggested to be reviewed in the development of representative government in 1987. In May 1987, the government published the 1987 Green Paper: Review of Developments in Representative Government to consider the next stage of development of representative government. Despite strong public opinion in the consultations supporting the introduction of direct elections, the Government concluded that no clear consensus on the timing or the extent of the introduction of direct elections emerged. The subsequent White Paper: the Development of Representative Government: The Way Forward delayed the first direct elections to the Legislative Council from 1988 to the 1991 elections. 18 members were returned from geographical constituencies by popular vote, out of a total of 60 LegCo members. As Chris Patten succeeded David Wilson as the last Governor of Hong Kong, extensive electoral reform proposals were announced in Patten’s inaugural Policy Address.