CONFIDENTIAL
of the Financial Secretary's speeches and said that he
would remind Mr Hadden-Cave of the need to tailor them to
two audiences, one in Hong Kong and one here. I told him
that the problem is more fundamental and that we will not only need assurances that funds will be available to meet
the cost of the plan of action, but will also need to know
the budgetary strategy for raising the money. We would need
to know the Hong Kong Government's budgetary plans in good
time even though the details of each year's budget could of
course only be formulated much nearer to Budget Day (late February). We consequently agreed that when the Governor returns to London in December this year, he would outline his general budget strategy so that we could comment as
appropriate.
5. As expected, I found that the Governor had not entirely
understood the importance we attach to a much extended system
of social security based on entitlement, although not
necessarily on contributions. I said that we needed a
coherent plan for this, adequately costed, together with a statement of budget policy explaining how the programme
would be funded. After some discussion, the Governor
CONFIDENTIAL
/accepted that