STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
6. During the early 1970s it was suggested that the remnants of HMOCS should be absorbed into the Diplomatic Service to form a unified overseas service. This idea has many advantages but founders, as do so many other things, on the rock of Hong Kong and their conditions of service. The Chief Secretary in Hong Kong, for example, who is supposed to equate with a DS3 officer, receives a salary of £30,000 p.a. upon which he pays income tax at a flat rate of 15%, and a housing contribution of 7%. He is very much
A fairly better off than the Head of the Diplomatic Service. bright young officer in his early thirties in Hong Kong would expect to be receiving about £16,000 a year (as opposed to his equivalent, a First Secretary in the Diplomatic Service on about £6,000 p.a.).
Solutions
7.
Despite the problem of incompatibility of conditions of service I am engaged in an attempt to establish a system of reciprocal secondments between Hong Kong and Whitehall. It is more likely that these problems can be overcome for short-term secondments than that they could for permanent appointments. The advantages for Hong Kong in giving a cadre of their administrative stream some Whitehall experience is obvious. It will have also the corresponding advantage in producing a cadre of Diplomatic Service officers with some experience in dependencies, although I believe that this will initially be of more use to them in dependent territories work inside the office than in being posted as Governors and Chief Secretaries to the dependencies.
8. It now seems clear that in the longer term future the main source of Governors, Chief and Financial Secretaries for the 20 remaining jobs in the dependencies for which we will have to provide officers will be the Diplomatic Service.
I do not think
that this is a bad thing. As I have written above, the stock of HMOCS officers is running dry. The job of Governor or Chief/ Financial Secretary will have to be taken over by a Diplomatic Service officer with the appropriate background. To an increasing extent the job of a colonial Governor requires the skills that
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STAFF IN CONFIDENCE