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of claims amounting to some £31,000. These passenger lists have been examined and have been found to include numbers of persons of whom no record exists in the Colonial Office and for whom we cannot accept responsibility, others have been identified as a probable Foreign Office liability. The Ministry appear to have included individuals formerly resident and interned in Foreign territory and would seem to have been working on a schedule (enclosure at (13) on 55081/29/47) which schedule the Colonial office accepted in so far as personnel from the Far Eastern Colonial Territories were concerned (15 on 55081/29/47).
5. Nominal rolls have, however, been prepared of those individuals identified as having been interned in the Colonies and for whom provisional responsibility can be accepted. We are also preparing separate lists of evacuees for whom we can accept liability. The Ministry of Transport were asked at (5) to submit revised claims on the basis of the nominal rolls and these revised claims
are at (10) amounting to some £16,000:-
Hong Kong
Federation of Malaya
Singapore
North Borneo
Sarawak
£11,380
2,541
2.244
190
126
£16,481.
6. We informed the Ministry at (5) that we were not able to identify some of the people shown on the passenger lists that the Ministry of Transport had managed to supply and we asked for further information on the bulk claims. The Ministry, however, were not able to supply further information (10) We are thus left temporarily saddled with bulk claims for some £65,000 (£82,000 minus £16,500) in respect of passages for which the Ministry cannot supply passenger lists and of which they have only very limited information. Were we to receive passenger lists, it should be possible to sort out the claims and direct charges to the proper quarter, indeed, the balance of the £31,000 claim at (43) on 1947 papers seems to be for the Foreign Office as many have been identified as that Department's responsibility. Nevertheless it will take time and reference to other Departments and to the Colonies to sort out particulars of this passenger list.
(b) where, however, we are merely given the name of a vessel and the information that so many men women and children travelled in that vessel, it is quite impossible for the Colonial office to sort things out. We cannot accept a claim on the Ministry's bare assumption that all who travelled in a certain vessel are a responsibility of the Far Eastern Colonial Governments.
(c) In the circumstances, I propose that the Ministry of Transport should be informed that we are asking the Foreign Office to look into those
listed