(134392) Dd. 737115 750m 4/70 Hw.
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL
HKK.
Registry No.
10/9
DRAFT LETTER
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
To: His Excellency
Top Secret.
Sir David Trench,G.C.M.G.,M.C.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted. Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
.In Confidence
Government House
HONG KONG.
Type 1 +
50
From
3
Mr. Wilford
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
You will be receiving by the bag which brings
this letter another letter that I have sent to you
to/you
That
on the subject of the defence contribution.
letter was agreed in draft with the other Ministries
concerned here; and although it represents a
There are some Sho believe that Hong King should bear the full cost of the "forces for internal
security and related
་
purposes, or
rata Host
thave should be a
"progressive increase of the Toro porhan of the expert it we be by the Colmay" (para
4 of the letter).
$
borne
considerable toning down of an earlier draft I
nevertheless thought I should send you this separate
and personal explanation of the circumstances in
which that letter was written.
2. As you can readily understand, we are under
strong pressure from the other Ministries concerned
to persuade you to increase your offer of £8 million.
We are resisting this pressure and have made it clear
to those Ministries that in our view you are right
in your judgment that £8 million is the maximum
that you could hope to secure; and that you will
have difficulty in persuading your Executive Council
to agree even to that figure.
3 We do feel, however, that there is come
-
substance in the view that has been put to us that
over the period of a five year agreement, the real
value of the contribution would substantially
diminish unless there was provision for some form
of annual adjustment to cover pay and price increases.
This has undoubtedly proved to be the case with the
current agreement. We very much hope, therefore,
/that......