/a future
Chairman
the particular meeting of the executive co-ordinating committee).
In the course of my informal discussions, the possibility of the appointment of a "national co-ordinator" as Chairman of the executive co-ordinating committee arose without my having to prompt it. Some of the voluntary bodies would actively welcome it and the rest would be prepared to accept it. Mr Lee, for BCAR, himself sees some possible advantages (and I was careful to emphasise that the proposal implied no lack of recognition on the Government's part of the work he had done so far). I have come increasingly to the view over the last 2-3 weeks that an independent figure of more national standing is likely to be preferable if only because I think he or she alone would have the authority to resolve any demarcation disputes between the voluntary organisations. We shall be pursuing this possibility, therefore, with a view to seeing whether any suitable names suggest themselves. In the meantime, Mr Lee will be content to stand in as Chairman of the executive co-ordinating committee and I think we should gracefully accept this. A gesture towards BCAR would be to arrange for/ to be co-opted on to the BCAR executive and we should, of course, emphasise that the proposed arrangements for the Vietnamese programme implied no alteration of BCAR's ongoing responsibilities for the co-ordination of refugee work generally.
I should be most grateful if you and the other recipients of this letter could let me have your views on these outline proposals as soon as possible. Given the timetable, would it be possible to let me have views either by phone in the course of Monday 3 September or by am Tuesday 4 September?
I am sending a copy of this letter to those who attended our meeting on 20 August and to Paul Taylor, Dennis Peach and Graham Angel in the Home Office.
your sincenhy Michael Head
'ME HEAD
CC
Mr T M Gang, DHSS Mr M R Gershon, CSD
Mr P J Thorpe, DES
Mr IH Nicol, DoE
Mr N H Reed, DE
Mr G A D Philip, Scottish Office
Ms M Evans, Welsh Office
Mr R S Reid, SHHD
Mr P Taylor, Estabs, HO
Mr D Peach, Finance Dept, HO
Mr G Angel, B1 Division, HO
Mr J Fisher, NIO
Me Stitt, FCO
C