༦༥༥༠ཡཆག ་ ལ སྒྲ་ཟབར བར ས
PROROKORNO BOMA
It was announced to the House on 3 December 1974 in the
Defence Secretary's statement on the Defence Review und
subsequently in the Defence White Paper (Cand 5976) that, although the main emphasis of our defence effort must in
future be on our contribution to NATO, we recognised that we
must continue to maintain forces in the dependent territories,
including Hong Kong. It was made clear that in Hong Kong we
intended to make some reductions in personnel and would be
secking from the Hong Kong Government a larger share of the
cost of our forces when, the present cost-sharing agreement,
which expires in March 1976, was re-negotiated. The garrison
at the time of the Defence Review comprised 5 Infantry
Battalions (2 of them Gurkha battalions), an artillery regiment
and an armoured reconnaissance squadron, engineers, a naval
frigate and patrol craft, and an RAF helicopter squadron.
Following discussions at official level both Governments
agreed that as an interim measure some reductions in the size
of the garrison could be made under the terms of the existing
(and to Parliament in April) agreement. It was accordingly announced in March 1975/ that
the garrison would be reduced by the withdrawal of the artillery
regiment (less one battery) and the armoured reconnaissance
squadron; and that economies would be made in locally enlisted
and UK personnel of all ·3 Services. At September 1975 prices
the remaining garrison was estimated to cost about £50 a year,
compared with £65M for the garrison before the Defence Review.
Under the current financial agreement Hong Kong's contribution
to the cost of the garrison amounts to about £81M a year.
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*CONFIDENTIAL
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