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11. In the supposition that the General and the Administrative, Legal and Judicial Staffing Sections will be kept together, we have considered a number of alternative homes for them. The best in our view is the Commonwealth Coordination department, which could be strengthened to become a Commonwealth and Dependent Territories Policy department. It would not, however, be right to add to the burden on CCD at present when they are preparing for a Commonwealth Conference in 1977. In the meanwhile, the two sections might fit conveniently into Hong Kong and Indian Ocean department which loses virtually all its responsibilities in the Indian Ocean when the Seychelles become independent in June this year. We shall not, however, make a final recommendation on this question until we have inspected Hong Kong and Indian Ocean department and Far Eastern department. We hope to complete this inspection and report further within the next two months.
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12. Meanwhile, we are making recommendations for Gibraltar and General department as it stands. three sections are so self-contained that our recommendations should hold good even if the General and the Administrative Legal and Judicial Staffing sections have ultimately to be transferred to another department.
13. We were required by our brief to consider whether the vacant post for an Assistant in the department was still required. We believe that there is scope for rather more high level work in the department and that if our recommendations that the department takes a more positive role in planning for the Dependent Territories are implemented the Head of department should be considerably busier. We do not, however, believe that there will be sufficient work for an Assistant as well, and recommend that the post should be abolished.
14.
We have recommended an additional E post for the General section in order to improve the section's capacity for initiating and coordinating policy work whilst maintaining its present consultative role. We have at the same time recommended that the contracts of one of the two Advisers to this section should be terminated, that the other should be transferred to the ODM, and that the ILO work, which the section is responsible for supervising but which is otherwise irrelevant to the section's main responsibilities, should be transferred to the Overseas Labour Adviser's office.
5.
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