Foreign and Commonwealth Office
in Catbar B
OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION
NISTRATION har. pl.
Eland House Stag Place London SW1 E 5DH
E O Laird Esq
FCO
Hong Kong Department
London SW1
Telephone 01-834 2377 ext
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 51 -3DEC 1971
Your reference HKK 14/14
Our reference SA/333/01
Date
En
12 November 1971
12
Χι
Akk14/14
LAST
REF.
(45)
NEXT
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Dear Loud,
HONG KONG JUDICIARY:
1.
PENSIONS
I am very sorry indeed that you have had to wait so long for a reply to your minute of 13 August about the question of what might be the appropriate pensions arrangements for judges of the Hong Kong Supreme Court appointed directly from the local Bar. We have had a continuous spate of urgent and important work on the pensions increases and pensions "take over" fronts which I am afraid has had to take priority over most other work.
2. As regards the suggestions of your legal adviser, as I was in some doubt as to what led him to make his radical approach, I had a discussion with him about the matter. I explained that, while there would be no objection in principle to a "local Bar" judge being allowed the choice of serving on pensionable terms as on non-pensionable but gratuitable conditions of service, the further option of pensionability by way of an exceptional contributary pension arrangement ought not to be pursued, especially if it were financed by way of a commercial life assurance or annuity device. We take the view that, even though the "local Bar" judges may well need special treatment the treatment accorded to them must have regard to the normal superannuation structure for the Hong Kong Government Service. It would be highly undesirable to establish for these judges a pensions code which would be incompatible with the Government system and which would not only establish an undesirable precedent to which other Hong Kong Government officers, who consider themselves to be in a special category, could refer quite justifiably. Moreover it would be wrong to establish any scheme for which post award dynamism could only be made on yet another uniquely different basis to that applicable to the Hong Kong Government Service generally. On these grounds we could not recommend that the Hong Kong Government should be invited to consider any commercially based pension systems. Similarly we would not wish to see the creation of a unique contributory scheme with a Hong Kong Government financial arrangement taking the form of a "pay as you go" as a fund base.
3. Your legal adviser did however explain to me that his radical approach arose from his understanding that you had rejected the proposals of a scheme on the lines of that embodied in the West Indies Federal Supreme Court (Salaries & Pensions) Act 1960 (paragraph 5 of Simpkins letter to Kinnear of 10 December refers). I do not know whether and, if so, why you do not favour the West Indian approach: to us it seems
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