Treasury Chambers
Great George Street, London S.W.1
Telephone: 01-930 1234, ext. 555
41
Our reference: 2DM 415/01 Your reference: HKK 10/9
E O Laird Esq CMG MBE
Hong Kong Department
SEORET
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Whitehall
London S W 1
Dear Laird,
HONG KONG DEFENCE CONTRIBUTION
Thank you for your letter of 12 March.
16 March 1971
RECHVED IN
REGISTRY NO.51
23mm 1971
HKK 10/9
I have certain comments on
the revised draft telegrams; these would help to cut down the formal reply to the Unofficials.
2
S'pue?
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discuss
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3
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In the formal reply we should like to see the following changes:-
Paragraph 4 to come after paragraph 2.
a
In the last sentence of that paragraph we must surely quote a figure for 1967/68 (ie the first year of the present contribution) not 1966/67 which was the last year of the previous arrangements
(c) Existing paragraph 3 (which would now come after paragraph 4)
to be limited to the first sentence only. The thinking in the second and third sentences could go in the guidance telegram if you wished but care needs to be taken that the idea of contributions to the local budget could not be turned against us by the Unofficials.
d) Paragraph 5 - tenth line.
"at least".
at
Replace "of the order of" by (The figure gets to over £19m in 1974/5 and of course costs will increase even further over the years with pay increases etc).
e) We very much like the thought included at the fourth sentence
of paragraph 5. We presume that you have checked that this statement is completely defensible.
(f) Delete last two sentence of paragraph 5. The point about
defence is already made clearly in the reply. The point about economic aid often being in the form of loans can be transferred elsewhere (see below).
ره
) Paragraph 6. Delete last two sentences. I suggest these
comparisons are more appropriate for the guidance telegram. (h) Insert at end of paragraph 6 "Furthermore it is incorrect to
say that HMG does not expect reimbursement for sums expended on aid contributions. Much of HMG's overseas economic aid
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takes the form of loans not grants". (i) Can we not delete all paragraph 7? Kai Tak, like devaluation,
is one of the many points which we have "already discounted" Should not our views and arguments about Kai Tak go into the guidance telegram, as are those on devaluation, for the Governor to use if the Unofficials involve him further on such subjects.
My views on the separate telegram to the Governor are:- (i) Paragraph 3, second word to read "published".
SECRET
Second sentence