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on constitutional matters. At present we have to rely on the normal administrative staff within the department and the advice of our departmental Legal Adviser. But this arrangement simply does not provide the kind of detached and comparative advice which would enable us to ensure, for example, that advice submitted to Ministers in any one case is in line with our position in other cases and with the advice submitted from other departments. We have to work far too much from hand to mouth, and we cannot expect heavily burdened legal advisers to devote the time to .deliberation upon these issues which they really need. Apart from a centre to provide co-ordinated advice on constitutional development, I would strongly recommend that the unit in your department should be equipped to visit territories begularly and provide this kind of advice to Governors and legislators in the course of their deliberations, so that there is a better chance of our being able to accept their eventual recommendations At present we often have to argue them off positions which they have adopted prematurely. The Adviser should, in my submission, be a person of high qualifications who could undertake special commissions such as that for which we have recently had to employ Lord Oxford as a Constitutional Commissioner in the Cayman Islands.
5. My suggestion for the staffing of such a unit would be that it should be headed by an experienced and expert person with legal qualifications who has been a Governor, Attorney-General or Legal Adviser. He would need a Staff Officer who could be, for example, a Grade 6 Desk Officer in your department. In other respects, the unit might be treated something like the Overseas Police Adviser; but if possible it should be an integral part of your depart- ment because of its special application to the dependent territories.
6. I am sending copies of this minute to others who may be concerned and whose views you would, I am sure, welcome on what I have said.
}
سبيا
Dependent Territories (General)
5 March 1971
Copied to:
Mr Scott
Miss Emery Mr Watt
Mr Heard
Mr Edwards
$163
Vormitt
R N Posnett
West Indian Department
Spoke of
Mr Bell This is of little interest to us.
terms
of
constitutional developmnet.
Shaw's new Capt.
What is the name of
M
And what wile it do? I have seen nothing
about it.
18.3-71
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