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Mr Wickson
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Thank you for your note of the meeting with Mr Fletcher in the Department of Trade on 23 August and for your draft reply to Mr Bristow's letter to Mr Wilberforce of 30 July. I have only
one comment on your draft record: I understood Mr Frost to say that the Board of Trade did, in fact, still exist (your paragraph 9). I have checked with the Legal Advisers of the Department of Trade who have confirmed this.
2. In the light of this, I have redrafted your draft letter from Mr Wilberforce to Mr Bristow, because I feel that the draft Order may not, in fact, be out of date. What has changed is the organisation for carrying out the requisitioning, as the Department of Trade no longer has representatives in Singapore and Hong Kong; but this organisation is not mentioned in the Order. I would also rather not, at this stage, suggest that authority to carry out the Order shaild be delegated to the Governor without first consulting him personally.
3. I would be grateful for your views on what we should now do. I think that we ought to review the Order:
(a) to consider whether it should be amended to
put the main onus for carrying it out onto the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, rather than the Board of Trade; (b) to pursue the matter of the delegation of the powers of requisition in Hong Kong; and
(c)
to examine again whether there is a need for the Order to cover aircraft as well as ships.
CODE 18-77
27 August 1976
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