TNAG-0289-FCO40-325-Departmental-briefs-on-Hong-Kong-1971 — Page 184

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Management

6.

Hitherto the problems of running the remaining dependent

territories tended to be treated as either political or administrative.

Some of the political problems are external ones involving third

countries as in the cases of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

We can leave these mainly on one side this afternoon. The others

are internal problems affecting the desires and aspirations of the

inhabitants; if we treat these as a special aspect of the purely

administrative problems we have what amounts fundamentally to a

question of management.

7. Up to 1961, the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Colonial Office had sole responsibility for all matters concerned with the management of the dependent territories. From that year, however, the Secretary of State, first of the Colonial Office, then of the

Commonwealth Office and now of the F.0.0. retained the overall

responsibility for the political aspects; at the same time the Department of Technical Co-operation (later the Ministry of Overseas Development and now the Overseas Development Administration) assumed responsibility for handling of aid and of virtually all the administrative matters affecting transfers, promotions and pensions of HMOCS, compensation schemes, the Overseas Service Aid Scheme, and terms and conditions of service applicable to the staffs employed by

the governments of the dependent territories. This division of responsibility stemming from decisions taken in 1961 and 1966 has undoubtedly complicated management, since it is not always possible to make a tidy distinction between issues of "policy" and "administration". It was partly with this sort of consideration în mind that the decision was taken in October 1970 to weld together the two aspects of foreign and commonwealth policy by bringing the Overseas Development Administration under the direct control of my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreigh and Commonwealth

Affairs.

8. It is a statement of the obvious that the Secretary of State bears ultimate responsibility for the good government of the dependent territories. This responsibility is discharged in each territory through a body of dedicated civil servants under the direct control

3.

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