How the Legislative Council functional constituencies should be dealt with in the long term is a controversial issue which cannot be resolved within a short period of time, Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam says.

He urged the community to continue discussing how the LegCo elections in 2012 and 2016 should be democratised step by step, to attain universal suffrage which complies with the principles of universality and equality in 2020.

Mr Lam today told lawmakers the Government is inclined not to adopt the method of replacing "corporate votes" with "director's/executive's/association's/individual votes" because different political parties and members, as well as different organisations both in and outside LegCo, have diverse views on how the electorate base of the functional constituencies should be changed.

"It will be extremely difficult for the community to reach consensus before the LegCo election is held in 2012," he said.

On how the functional constituencies should be dealt with in the long term, Mr Lam said there are many different views among various sectors of the community.

"It is the position of the Government we should, at this stage, endeavour to democratise the LegCo election in 2012. We propose, in the 70-seat strong LegCo, consideration may be given to allocating the new functional constituency seats to elected District Council members to increase the number of LegCo seats to be returned by geographical constituencies through direct or indirect elections to about 60%."