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Mr. Paul, HUCK)
HKB 233 13
G
DIEV-ET
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
File
OSPA ?
London SW1 2AH
25 January 1991
~9c2071.
F N Pusinelli Esq
Chairman of the Overseas Service
Pensioners' Association
63 Church Road
HOVE
Sussex BN3 2BD
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Dear Mr Pusinelli,
Thank you for your letter of 7 December 1990 enclosing a copy of the record of a meeting between yourselves and Sir David Ford which took place on 20 November.
Keith Shipley of the Hong Kong Government, who, as you know, was present at that meeting, has however pointed out one or two sentences in the record which are not quite right. order to avoid any misunderstanding, I am therefore writing to set the record straight.
In
First, paragraph 2 of the record appears to give the impression that the British Government would be receptive to a scheme on the lines described in the second sentence of that paragraph. I understand that in fact Mr Shipley said, in response to a question, that the British Government were prepared to consider the idea, but did not imply that we would necessarily be receptive to it. That is indeed the position.
Secondly, Mr Shipley has a different recollection of what was said about the matters referred to in paragraph 5 of your record. The position is that the Hong Kong Government are working on proposals for the British Government to take over the payment of pensions against reimbursement by the Hong Kong Government. We have not yet received these proposals; and in any case, even if they were to be acceptable to us in principle, the rate of exchange at which any such arrangement would operate is very much an open question. It would be wrong to leave you with the impression that a solution on the lines of the "OSPA formula" is on the cards.
/I
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