CODE 18-77
Mr Gibby ERD
Reference
TRY
Mar 1990
fou
Miss Major
.:un Taken
OECD: EXTENSION OF CONVENTION AND INSTRUMENTS
1.
CONVENTION
STRUMENTS
Mr Stone 914
4/4
Yours?
Ku9/4.
//
I refer to your minute of 23 March about the Channel Islands (not to all)., to your letter of 26 March to Robert Gordon and his reply of 29 March. I must begin by apologising for having been unable to attend your meeting on 12 March.
2.
It may be helpful if I begin by setting out how I personally see the situation; this is as follows:-
(i) I do not think that the OECD Convention applies to the Channel Islands or any other dependent territory, although I would be happy to reconsider this view in the light of any new material or arguments put by the Channel Islands.
(ii) This view is, as I understand it, shared by the OECD Legal Adviser. It is thus not simply a question of persuading the FCO.
(iii) We have established with the OECD Secretariat a straight-forward procedure for applying the OECD Convention and its subordinate instruments to the Channel Islands and any other dependent territory which wants this. It would be simpler and clearer to use this procedure rather than to attempt to persuade all concerned that the Convention had always applied to these territories.
(iv) Membership of OECD is not simply a question of signing on the dotted line: legislation is required in order to confer privileges and immunities upon the OECD and those connected with it. (Under Supplementary Protocol No. 2 to the OECD Convention, we are obliged to accord to the OECD the same privileges and immunities as we had formerly accorded to the OEEC under Supplementary Protocol No. 1 to the OEEC Convention.) Do the Channel Islands already have such legislation in place? Clearly we cannot extend the OECD Convention to them until they do, since we would be put in breach of our international obligations. (The UK legislation providing the necessary privileges and immunities cannot be extended.)
(v) There is no rule that we are obliged to consult all dependent territories about all Conventions; in other words, we can choose not to consult certain territories about a Convention which it would be inappropriate to extend to them. When I attended a meeting last year with Tom Richardson (then Head of ERD) and John Gray (HMA, UKDel OECD), I thought it had been agreed that we would not suggest to dependent
1
/territories