15 October 1991
JE Mortimer Esq HM Treasury Parliament Street LONDON
SW1 3AG
CONFIDENTIAL
HKB 233/1
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
London SW1A 2AH
Fill
158
Dear Janie,
(141
HONG KONG: COMPENSATION/INCENTIVE SCHEME AND PENSIONS ARRANGEMENTS FOR HER MAJESTY'S OVERSEAS CIVIL SERVICE
1. Thank you for your letter of 24 September.
2.
I should emphasise one point at the outset. Given the inherent uncertainty in predicting the numbers of officers who will stay on in Hong Kong beyond 1997, and the dates on which they will eventually leave the territory, there will always be an element of conjecture about the potential costs of the Scheme. The Hong Kong Government are in the best position to make authoritative projections about numbers of officers involved, and even they face considerable difficulties in providing "detailed information about the potential costs". That said, we feel reasonably confident that our latest estimates are of the right magnitude, but we shall continue to refine our figures as new information is received from Hong Kong.
I shall address your specific questions in the order in which you have raised them:
3.
Compensation/Incentive Scheme
i) The summary sheets at Annexes 'A' and 'B' give the age profile, grades and salaries of those HMOCS members in the Hong Kong Civil Service and Police Force respectively, who are expected to be in post at 1 July 1997. These are based on individual staff details received from the Hong Kong Government in 1988, but we know that the overall numbers of HMOCS officers has not changed materially since then.
For the purposes of the estimates, we have assumed that the officers concerned will have reached the maximum of their grade salary scale by 1997, and allowance has been made for anticipated promotions arising between now and 1997. We have also uprated Hong Kong's base data to take account of the general salary increases and individual scale adjustments which have been implemented since then. of the 829 names listed by Hong Kong, it is estimated that some 70 police
COLADZ