}
4. Hong Kong must be regarded as at least a partial source of supply for some of the senior posts. It is, therefore, desirable that there be officers in Hong Kong who had had experience in their middle years of service outside Hong Kong. Were it not for one factor, I would have no hesitation in recommending that governorships in the dependent territories could best be filled by secondees from Hong Kong. However, the very high level of salaries enjoyed by the Hong Kong Service and, because of low income tax and other fringe benefits, the very high net emoluments, makes it difficult to transfer a Hong Kong officer to another dependency (where his equivalent probably receives less than half of his net pay) unless some system of topping up is adopted.
Diplomatic Service Officers with Colonial Experience
5. I have recently gone through the service records of the DS officers in Grades 4 and 5. There are about 60 officers with enough service left to make them available for such a posting. Only some dozen have had that type of colonial experience which is relevant to the type of job that we are now considering. Most of our ex-HMOCS officers spend much of their colonial service as District Officers far removed from the operations of central government. I suggest that their subsequent diplomatic experience which, of course, they share with all other members of the Service, is almost as important when taking over a job as Governor or Chief Secretary as was their former colonial experience. For most of them the colonial experience was at least 10 years ago and has, I suggest, little relevance to their suitability for work in the dependent territories in the late 1970s.
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 71%. He is very much better off than the Head of the Diplomatic Service. A fairly bright young officer in his early
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