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far in advance: Ministers would want to agree how to meet the
obligation in the light of the circumstances then prevailing.
3. The Government did not announce the scheme at that stage.
Officials continued to work on the other elements of a
package, ie the question of sterling safeguards and adjustment to the operation of the Supplementary Pension for Overseas Service (SPOS) regulations.
4.
After discussion between our Departments and with the Hong
Kong Government, my officials put forward last August their detailed proposals for tackling this package of issues. Your officials had reservations about the proposals for sterling safeguards. Later exchanges have narrowed these differences,
and I understand that the enclosed discussion paper is now
broadly agreed among Departments. However we are still some way from decisions, mainly because of uncertainty about the feasibility of one possible option for sterling safeguards (option (d) in the attached paper).
5. Pressure has meanwhile built up in Hong Kong, where many HMOCS officers are no longer prepared to rely on our repeated
assurances since 1984 that these matters are under
consideration. They have recently organised themselves into an Association: at present its leadership is moderate and responsible and they kept a firm grip on the several hundred members who attended the association's inaugural meeting last week; but we cannot expect this restraint to continue. Already last week there were media reports of some of these top expatriate civil servants, judges and police officers voicing publicly their lack of confidence in the Joint
Declaration.
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