TNAG-0569-FCO40-702-Planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 34

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CONFIDENTIAL

13.

But social welfare benefits can more appropriately be financed by levies on employers and employees. And in any event can there be a case for a public social security or similar scheme when provision is already being made privately and more efficiently through charitable organisations and the Chinese extended family system?

On the first point, the Governor has made it clear in his Despatch that

special circumstances rule out contributory schemes

and that provision would have to be made from general revenue.

As far as public versus private provision is concerned, it is by

no means clear that the private sector is providing either an adequate or an efficient service. Lady Williams' Report in 1966

and the Report of the Hong Kong Inter-Departmental Working Party on Social Security in 1967(see for example paragraphs 5.30, 11.18 and 24.7 of their report) both drew attention to the erosion of the Chinese extended family system and to the duplication and mis-

direction of private effort. And, still on the question of

efficiency, the Financial Secretary, in his winding-up speech

in the Budget debate, was emphatic that he 'would go so far as

to say that the absence of a profit yardstick in the public

sector encourages civil servants to be even more cost conscious

than their counterparts in the private sector'.

CONFIDENTIAL