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Mis Javier
Immigration and Nationality Department
Lunar House 40 Wellesley Road Croydon CR9 2BY
Telephone 081-760 (GTN 3822)
LAYS
THOME OFFICE
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Mrs Regina Ip,
Government Secretariat, HONG KONG
Your reference
Our reference
Date
14 January 1991
Dear Regina,
COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR THE UK TEAM IN HONG KONG.
We discussed this morning my letter to you of 11 January, and I agreed to consider with colleagues your suggestion that the Home Office should negotiate the contract on behalf of HKG who would then sign it. Ownership would then rest with HKG.
I am afraid this course would give rise to substantial, and fatal, difficulties. HMG's procurement is based on standard Government contracts and operating procedures, If we were to proceed as you suggest, a unique contract would have to be devised and draw up and the Operational Requirement (a copy of which has been considered by Mrs Ching and her colleagues; they have made helpful comments for which I am most grateful) would have to be rewritten. Because resources in the various Home Office contracts divisions are so stretched, there would be no capacity available at the moment to take on this complicated work and expertise would have to be bought in. This would result in inevitable delays before tenders could be issued to the trade. The negotiation of the contract itself would bring its own problems because discussions between the contractor and HMG/HKG representatives would focus around an unfamiliar document. In short, we would be looking at a very serious delay of many months and considerable extra costs.
I note what you have said about the potential difficulties which you envisage might be caused if this matter were to be given a higher political profile in Hong Kong. I wonder, however, why this should be. Under the 1990 Act, the Governor is required to reimburse the Sof$ for administrative expenses incurred at a level to be determined by the Sofs. The financial and explanatory memorandum attached to the Bill, which will have been well studied in Hong Kong, suggested that costs for reimbursement would be incurred at an estimated level of around £800,000 per annum, In fact, it now seems that the actual expenditure on an annual basis - some £600,000 - may be some 25% lower than this. As you know, the general principle which has been adopted is that the costs of the operation of the scheme and
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