CONFIDENTIAL
If
Sir Murray MacLehose, introduced such a system shortly after becoming Governor. I attach as Annex C a list of secondments during the past two years. The arrangement was not a success; primarily because the better UK officials were reluctant to leave the main
stream of Government Service to spend a couple of years in Hong Kong and so, they believed, damage their promotion prospects. we reintroduce, preferably on a larger scale, such an arrangement, it will fail inevitably unless the officials seconded are hand picked and given trustworthy assurances that their careers will not suffer from their temporary detachment from the main stream. I am presently engaged in preliminary discussions with CSD to try and identify the problems which will need to be solved before such a system of secondments and a parallel system of secondments from Hong Kong can be brought into effect. I shall report to POD, PSD and PPD when I have received CSD's reactions.
12. I recommend that I should be authorised to write to Sir Murray MacLehose describing the proposals set out in paragraphs 2-8 above and that during my forthcoming visit to Hong Kong I should seek his views about the possible appointment of a Political Adviser or chef de Cabinet and the secondment of UK based officials
to the Hong Kong Government.
9 September 1976
cc (
):
PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Mr Larmour o.r.
Mr Lewis (GGD)
Mr Smith (Economists)
Mr Hurst
Mr Rushford
Mr Walker (POD)
Mr Moberly (PPD) Mr Lipsey
6
CONFIDENTIAL,
J AB Stewart
Hong Kong Department