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to which any future compensation scheme should confirm. But it would seem, if I have read the Fiji Order correctly, that that Order, which was made after the 1961 Paper does not conform with paragraph 17. Are there any other ground rules and, if so, are they to be found in published documents.
4.
Subject to these questions, I think it worthwhile trying to set out a number of relevant factors and considerations which need to be taken into account on the basis, as Sir G Howe's minute PM/85/18 to the Prime Minister of 7 March 1985 indicates, that there should be some kind of compensation scheme (though it is not clear what anyone meant by "comparable arrangements") as regards HMOCS members serving in Hong Kong.
5. There are three elements, compensation, the right to retirement, and inducement to serve for the future. They are separate elements though they may be connected with each other. Compensation by its nature, is a payment to recompence for loss and the loss that may be involved may be the withdrawal of protection, terms and conditions, or the loss of career prospects. Loss of career prospects may be illusory and it may not justify compensation until it actually comes about. In some previous compensation schemes a distinction has been drawn as to the circumstances of payment dependent upon whether there is an actual loss (ie supercession) or merely a fear of loss of career; indeed the existing Hong Kong scheme is designed to deal with "constitutional casualties". But even without that element, the loss of the Secretary of State's protection and the prospect of continuing in a very different service milieu from the present can well be held to justify compensation and has been so held in a number of cases in the past.
6.
The issue as regards compensation on the basis of your present proposals seems to be not whether compensation is payable under those two heads (why are you intending to pay one tenth?), but as to the quantum; and no attempt has been made to give a reason or argument for choosing one tenth of what I assume would be the actuary figure. How do you defend that figure?
7 The right to retire is, in some ways connected with the right to compensation; indeed, the right to retire with earned pension would seem to be a more important, and perhaps a prior, question than that of compensation. I would have thought it is extremely difficult to deny HMOCS officers a right to retire (it is not too fanciful to say that they need a guarantee, true of a different kind, that they can leave Hong Kong with their earned pensions in the same way as Hong Kong Chinese have sought a guarantee of being able to leave through the nationality package). In this respect it is irrelevant that the United Kingdom has an agreement with China
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