file
248
15 April 1992
Mrs S Brown
HM Treasury Parliament Street LONDON
SW1
Dear Sandra,
HMOCS: COMPENSATION SCHEME
1.
HKA 233/1
Thank you for your letter of 6 April.
Contract officers
223
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
London SWIA 2AH
2. You asked whether it would be possible to limit eligibility for the compensation/incentive scheme to those who were members of HMOCS on, say, 1 January 1992, thus excluding those who are at present contract officers from the scheme. However, the contract officers concerned have been told that they will have until 30 June to decide whether to opt to switch to pensionable terms and thus eligibility to apply for membership of HMOCS. The deadline has been put back on several occasions in the past. Given these facts, our legal advice is that the officers are entitled to claim that they have a legitimate expectation that they will have until 30 June in which to opt for HMOCs. To attempt to bring that date forward at all, particularly at a time when we have just given an outline of a scheme which is relevant to their decision, would be a breach of good faith. It would be a much more serious breach of good faith to attempt to substitute a date in the past and before 7 April, and could well have significant consequences in the event of a judicial review.
3.
The more we discuss the question of these contract officers, the more we believe that very few of them will in fact take up the option to become HMOCS. They have precious little time in which to make a vital career decision. The compensation scheme on its own will not, in our judgement, persuade them to opt to stay in Hong Kong on pensionable terms.
Accrual or payment when due
4. Our only reason for proposing previously that payments would accrue and only be made available at the end of the officer's service with the SAR Government, instead of being made available as they are earned on a annual basis, was an earlier judgement that the Chinese would be suspicious of a scheme whereby HMG paid funds to officers still in the service of the SAR Government. However, as I mentioned
REGACR