28/1
Huh 24/2
with
M" Formenter
Sir L. Monson
Mr. Royle has seen your attached note on the Hong Kong underground railway. He has asked that a paragraph might be added to a letter which you are sending to the Governor about this indicating that Ministers here are taking a personal interest in the awarding of the contract for the Hong Kong under- ground railway. He would also like to be added, if it is thought constitutionally appropriate for such a thing to be included, that Ministers here hope that the award of the contract would be "satisfactory to HMC". Mr. Royle would be glad to see the draft again when these points have been included.
MA
(M.F. Forrester) 27 January, 1971
1.
With respect I think it would be a tactical mistake to wave the Ministerial stick at the Governor at this stage. The manuscript amendment I placed on the draft letter to him was, with its reference to political circles, intended to make clear to him that Ministers were inevitably concerned in this here.
2. It is not so much the constitution which makes me wary. Under the Royal instructions the Governor has in fact to take whatever instructions in The Queen's name are giv en him by Her Secretary of State. It is rather that he reacts to language of the kind suggested in your minute as being "half orders" of a kind to which he maintains the F.C.O., though in my view without any justification, are particularly prone and he would interpret this as an instruction "to bend" the long-standing policy of putting schemes like this to open international tender in such a way as to rig the results in favour of British interests without our having the honesty to say the policy has been abandoned.
13.