FED 299/774/03
x of Page 10
Flag S
Flag B (Mr Born's para 1)
Sce 299/401/02
28 €
HI
7/2/68
Mr. Tansey Mr. Brown
Reference...
(at 18/6/1)
Miss Ogilvie's note on the letter at (16) sets out the background to Mr. Burn's complaints very fully but I am sure that it takes too charitable a view of Mr. Burn. If his letters show a lack of understanding of the law he is by no means the "innocent abroad". He set up Oriental Domestic Ltd. in 1964 as a speculative venture and from the beginning ignored or misrepresented in public the advice which the Ministry of Labour and Hong Kong had given him. His general reputation is not of the best and, while this is only heresay as far as I am concerned, the details of his business in page 3 of his letter do nothing to dispell it. If it is true that 12 of his 36 recruits from Hong Kong have not fulfilled the contracts
I see little alternative to the conclusion that there is something wrong with his business methods or that the employers/clients that he has been able to attract are among the less satisfactory. His letter says that firms in the same business do not appear to have had any difficulties over the terms of the model ondinance and certainly we have had no other complaints about it.
2.
(16) refers only twice to previous dealings with the Commonwealth Office. The first on page 4 refers to a series of telephone calls by Mr. Burn in 1966. There is no record of these conversations and, as the officer concerned was new to the Department (He has now left.) it is not impossible that initially at any rate he was ignorant of the subject. Before the exchanges ended however, I went over the position with him. The second reference (on page 5) is to a telephone call to me. I explained that I knew nothing about the ordinance and advised him to seek information in Hong Kong. In reply to further enquiries I also explained the distinction between British subjects and alien residents of Hong Kong and said that in my personal opinion the proposed ordinance would not apply to British subjects coming to the U.K. In this I was correct.
3.
Another example of his misquoting or ignoring the advice
Page given to him occurs in paragraph 4 of (16) where he says that the ordinance does not empower the Commissioner of Labour to insist on the inclusion in the contract of a clause permitting the worker to terminate the contract at three months notice without repaying any part of his passage to this country. The advice given to him by his own legal adviser at E/4 is however that the authorities are acting within their rights in refusing to attest contracts without such provision and are not acting ultra vires. In this connection it must be said however that paragraph 2 of the Minister's letter at (14) is not above criticism. The legal advice at E/4 critices only one clause of the contract (in the penultimate paragraph) and it is not a clause about which Mr. Burn himself has complained. Hong Kong have accepted the criticism and amended the clause in question. Couns also expresses the opinion that it would be ultra vires for the Commissioner to refuse to attest a contract containing variations in certain other clauses of the model. Again Mr. Burn himself has not complained of the clauses in question and as Hong Kong have explained they are optional and not insisted upon. Hong Kong have however insisted upon the inclusion of a clause on the lines of clause 14 (b) of the model contract on the grounds that they are
to do so by Section 5(2) of the Ordinance. It is this clause that is the main cause he says the only cause of Mr. Burn's complaint.
dai
561(k)
14.
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