The
wish to raise on paragraph 16. The Committee should then have before them
the draft of a White Paper to be circulated by the Defence Secretary.
Ministers primarily concerned should also meet to discuss in more detail
the study which had been before officials on the reduction in our
expenditure on military research and development and should report their
conclusions to the Committee at their next meeting. When the papers
relevant to the Defence Expenditure Studies were circulated to the Cabinet,
the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretaries should also circulate the records
of the Ministerial discussions with our American, Australian, New Zealand,
Malaysian and Singaporean allies on our plans for withdrawal from Malaysia
and Singapore, under cover of a note regarding the consequences of our
seeking to withdraw at a date earlier than that envisaged in the report by
officials.
The Committee
(1) Invited the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretaries to circulate a memorandum to the Cabinet covering the record of Ministerial consultations with the Governments of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia on our plans to withdraw forces from Singapore and Malaysia and outlining the consequences of seeking to complete this withdrawal by 1970-71 rather than by 1975-76.
(2) Invited the Defence Secretary, in consultation with
the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of Technology, to consider further the proposed reduction in our expenditure on military research and development and to report their conclusions at the next meeting of the Committee.
(3) Invited the Defence Secretary to circulate, for
consideration at their next meeting, a draft of a White Paper on the defence programme for publication before the Summer Recess.
(4) Agreed that members of the Committee would inform
the Foreign, Commonwealth and Defence Secretaries before the next meeting of any major points which they wished to raise on the remainder of the report.
Cabinet Office, S.W.1.
27th June 1967
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