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4.
On compensation, the rationale for offering Option D with a cap of £120,000 is bizarre, if not perverse. The 1960 White Paper excludes Hong Kong only because
only because the colony was sufficiently wealthy for HMG not to need to offer financial support for the continuing employment of expatriate officers. The exclusion did not relate to eligibility for compensation and the Treasury know this full well.
5. The Treasury are also well aware that we cannot sustain the notion that the 'offer' tabled in Hong Kong was generous. It contained no element of compensation for loss of career and was only payable to those who stayed on beyond 1997! You know better than I the arguments against the Treasury proposition that HMOCS can continue beyond 1997 without any adverse implications. To add insult to injury, the Treasury refer to Option D as full compensation when they know that it is anything but, even without the addition of a cap of £120,000. They are also wrong about costs; if all eligible officers were to benefit from the compensation scheme their 'concession' of Option D with a cap would cost no more than the unacceptable offer we have already made. The use of a cap in relation to Option C would be controversial enough.
their compensation
6. I note that they do not suggest that their proposal would be safe from legal challenge.
7. I would suggest that no more can be achieved between officials and that the politicians need to break the deadlock. It would be interesting to have Mr Patten's further views on the Treasury arguments before we attempt to help the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister find their way through this latest obfuscation.
D S FISH
Overseas Pensions Department 19 January 1993
I think we know what he will say,
jay
Mike writes will discuss with Dinham today and call me to manor to let
me know the Gov's reacter to the want letter. He thrriles the (row
may
to speak to the PM direct.
In 19/1