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(125) on TS HWB 10/4.
Part C:
having them by the use of local personnel the question of timing was never, as far as I recall, really discussed. Certainly what I had hoped was that the fighters would appear as part of the enhanced garrison and fall to be included in the overall negotiations over the new defence contribution to be paid post 1971. Dealt with in this way I felt there was some hope of obtaining Ex.Co. and F.C. approval for them. To go to Unofficial members now and to ask for the additional amounts would, I fear, be an almost hopeless task and might raise animosities which would prejudice the task (which will be tricky enough anyway) of negotiating the new defence contribution later. Deeply as I feel about the need for a fighter presence here, therefore, I have to say that unless the fighters can be provided wholly free in the first instance, and within the present contribution for the first year, I am afraid we shall have to forego them. If this can be done then there is some hope thereafter of "burying" them in the new negotiations.
Moreover, I do not myself think that I have ever fully accepted that Hong Kong should have to repay the full recurrent cost of the fighter unit. The minutes of the Chiefs of Staff meeting in April 1968 are not a reliable guide. The discussion at that meeting, to the beat of my recollection, centred on how to reduce the cost by the device of a mixed unit with local and regular R.A.F. elements and it was certainly conduoted with the Chiefs of Staffs' stipulation as regards costs in the background: but whatever I said about meeting the costs was only said on the assumption that this stipulation could not be overcome, as I expected it probably could not. This however should not be taken to mean I regarded it as reasonable that we should pay the full costs or accepted the Chiefs of Staffs' arguments on which the stipulation was based. I regard them as very far from valid : but since we were basically not talking about the incidence of cost but how to reduce the total, the meeting did not seem to me to be the right moment to pursue the subject. In any case, I did not see the minutes of the meeting in draft, nor had I an opportunity to challenge them, and I cannot in consequence be bound by them. You will remember that at the time I first saw them I expressed some dissatisfaction at some of the phraseology.
My position therefore is that I believe (for the reasons frequently reiterated in the past) that a small fighter force here is a very necessary part of the garrison. I consider therefore, that the recurrent cost should be split in some agreed way
as I have said above, as part of the new defence contribution negotiations) and that we should not be asked to pay the capital cost. However, I am more or less reconciled to the unlikelihood of anything much less