CONFIDENTIAL
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
4.
The Permanent Under-Secretary has recently approved a paper suggesting that we should revive a programme for reciprocal secondments between the dependencies and the Office. The purpose of this is two-fold. First, to provide within the Diplomatic Service a small cadre of officers with some dependent territories' experience who could later in their careers either man dependent territories' desks or become Heads of Dependent Territories' Departments and/or become Chief Secretaries or Governors for the remaining dependencies, because the supply of suitable HMOCS officers is drying up rapidly. Second, to provide officers from the dependencies with better contact with Whitehall and with the trends in current thinking in Britain and in Europe in order to overcome the problem of insularity and closed thinking. Hong Kong will clearly be the main source of the inward secondees and I have now agreed with personnel departments and the Civil Service Department the ground work of conditions of service for the secondees. We are now about to agree an approach to Hong Kong to identify officers and jobs for such a programme.
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CONFIDENTIAL
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE