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understand that you will not accept a rate worse than this.
SPOS
7. The Treasury are aware that the SPOS amendment is a very important element of the package. They said they would continue to examine the ODA's proposed amendment to SPOS but would not/not give any guarantee that they would ultimately be prepared to recommend acceptance of the amendment.
WAY FORWARD
8.
On the basis of our discussion with the Treasury, the next word underlined best package which next word underlined might be achievable would be a compensation scheme at a cost of 40 million pounds, a sterling safeguard using the Treasury mechanism with the rate at 16:1, and amendment to the SPOS regulations.
9.
One major snag is that a number of the officers in the Treasury dealing with HMOCS are about to go on leave, so it could take up to two months to produce such a package (or to reach the
This conclusion that an acceptable package cannot be agreed). means that you would need to decide whether to seek a decision on HMOCS at OPD (K) on 1 July before it is clear whether further discussions at the working level will result in an acceptable agreement. There are a number of possibilities but the two obvious ones seem to be:
(a) to press for a decision on 1 July Crisky: it could produce the result we want, or not, or no decision at all). This option would require careful preparation with other OPD (K) members in advance.
(b) to pursue the ideas above with the aim of an agreed package or, as a fall back, reversion to OPD (K) in due course. Alternatively, if we opt for (a) and no decision is taken we could nonetheless seek to pursue (b) anyway: but the conditions would be distinctly less propitious.
If you consider that it is possible to hold the line with the HMOCS Association for a while Longer, we would welcome the chance of trying to reach an agreement which we can submit to you and to Ministers. If we could manage to resolve this issue through agreement, it would make the Treasury much more disposed to being helpful on the details of the schemes; this is important for, as usual, the devil is in the detail.
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