HONG KONG: ROYAL NAVAL PRESENCE
Points to Make with the Defence Secretary
- We talked about how to retain the Royal Naval presence in Hong Kong in the margins of cabinet on 11 April.
-
Governor recognises MOD's acute financial position.
Considers that only way to reduce costs to MOD is to reduce
number of vessels from three to two, undesirable though this would be from point of view of operational effectiveness.
Hong Kong calculate this would save MOD £3 million over
five years.
- A significant step forward by Hong Kong. look at it very sympathetically.
Hope you will
Governor has personally reviewed all other possible ways of helping you with financing vessels, over and above the
usual 65%/35% split, but concluded that there are no such
avenues.
If reducing the number of vessels looks like a runner, Governor will quickly dispatch a team to wrap up the
details.
- HMG facing a lot of difficult Hong Kong related problems
at the moment (airport, VBPs). Important to solve this one.
quickly, if we can.
RODAGB/1
VAS