STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
SENIOR STAFF FOR THE DEPENDENT TERRITORIES IN THE 1980s
1. At the beginning of the 1980s it is expected that Britain will retain responsibility for about ten dependent territories (Anguilla, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, the Caymans, the Falklands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, St Helena (with Ascension and Tristan da Cunha), the Turks and Caicos and Hong Kong). Hong Kong is effectively self-sufficient as far as the provision of staff is
concerned. It handles its own recruiting and still offers a full career structure for expatriate officers. The FCO is giving thought to the problem of providing senior staff for the other dependencies into the 1980s.
2. We estimate that there will.be a need to provide senior officers for between 20 and 25 posts (Governors, Chief and Financial Secretaries). However, by 1930 there will only be left
about nine HMOCS officers active in the dependent territories
outside Hong Kong under the normal retiring age of 55. A simple solution could have been to staff the other dependencies by secondments or transfers from Hong Kong. However, the very high level of salaries in Hong Kong makes this difficult (e.g. a bright young officer in his 20s in Hong Konɛ would receive about £16,000 p.a. and only pay 15 income tax on this).
3. The only other major source of suitable staff would appear to be the Diplomatic Service. We would not exclude, where appropriate, wider trawl among, e.g. retired senior officers of the Armed Services or serving officers from ODM or other Whitehall Departments. The problem which faces us now is to establish a small cadre of officers in the Diplomatic Service )and the Home Civil Service) with suitable recent experience of work in the dependencies. There are officers in the Diplomatic Service and Home Civil Service with HMOCS experience but by 1980 these will only number about 40 and for most of these their last colonial experience was at least ten years ago. It is, therefore, desirable that there should be a small number of DS and HCS officers who
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE