Yemen) of the general principle that pensions of indigenous officers are a territorial responsibility, there might not be undue difficulty
for Hong Kong in the application to it of a uniform scheme for picking up the expatriate bill everywhere.
7. A conditional scheme would also, I think, be acceptable if the exclusion of Hong Kong (and preferably of some other territories)
followed automatically from the nature of the conditions as framed (e.g. on the basis of aid-worthiness).
I assume that the conditional offer would be applicable to dependent territories only, that we would want to offer to pick up the bill in all independent territories, and that the consequent disparity of treatment could be satisfactorily justified.7
The difficulty here, I understand, is that we would want to define
the conditions in such a way as to permit taking over the expatriate bill for straight political reasons (e.g. to cover the case of Fiji) the exclusion of Hong Kong under a set of political conditions could
present a problem. As for conditions based on aid-worthiness,
I can foresee problems in finding a definition that would exclude the very affluent territories while embracing territories that are
deserving of assistance but are not grant-aided.
Mr. Fairclough
has suggested that we might confine a conditional scheme to those territories participating in OSAS. As a rough and ready way of separating the very affluent dependent territories (Hong Kong, Bahamas and Bermuda) from the rest, it might serve very well; but I would like to see some statement indicating how we would
propose to justify its use as a criteria for determining whether or not to pick up the expatriate pensions bill before expressing any
view of its suitability.
8.
Cu
My conclusions are that :
(a) We should be able to accept, without undue difficulty, a scheme which included Hong Kong or, for that matter,
excluded Hong Kong provided exclusion was automatic
under defined and defensible conditions of general application.
/ (b)
...