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correspondence on the repatriation by the Department of Health and Social Security of Dependent Territory nationals who have been mentally ill.
On capital and corporal punishment, the General section is the coordinator of all submissions on policy."
Additionally, Mr Pauncefort performs administrative duties for the department as a whole following transfer of the Assistant without replacement. He also supervises, without, however, playing much part in their work, the two staff concerned with the International Labour Organisation. He had, at the time of our inspection, only just returned from three months absence as Secretary to the Seychelles Electoral Review Commission. The grade 9 officer also acts as note-taker at constitutional conferences from time to time.
2. The fact that the section was recently managed for three months by two grade 9s (one of them borrowed from the Gibraltar section) during Mr Pauncefort's Secretaryship of the Seychelles Electoral Review Commission reflects not so much a lack of real workload as the section's present rather passive role. Reduced circumstances merely resulted in a reduction in the amount and quality of advice which the section could provide.
3. The section at present supervises and acts as a channel of communication to the Advisers on Audit and on Colonial Affairs. We have recommended the abolition of one of these posts and the transfer of the other to the Ministry of Overseas Development and that the section should itself assume some of the functions, including the revision of "Dependent Territories Departmental Practice" and the weeding of records held in the section's cupboards which had been delegated to the Adviser on Colonial Affairs.
4. We have considered what other records are available and whether the section's research functions might be diverted elsewhere. The Librarian of the Downing Street East Library has explained to us that the Library hold a considerable body of constitutional materia arranged by territories. This is not, however, cross-indexed so that the Library would be unable to answer the type of questions on constitutional precedent which are addressed to the General section. The department should, however, bear in mind the considerable experience of Colonial Office affairs which still exists in Library & Records department. The Head of Research department has told us that he now has nobody of much experience of the Dependent Territories and insufficient capacity to undertake research papers on Dependent Territories subjects unless they have a high priority. Research department no longer has an internationa section and is organised on a regional basis. The research post fo Ireland and the Commonwealth in the Atlantic region has disappeared
2.
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/with