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with Mr Branney's retirement.
We recommend, nonetheless, that the Head of Gibraltar and General department should explore with the Head of Research department the possibility of Research department assistance in planning for the new phase of accelerated decolonisation. The Head of Research department has told us that his department may be able to offer advice on the Territorial Studies required as follow- up action to the Secretary of State's despatch of 13 June 1975 on the future of the Dependent Territories. Deeper and more generalized research (on the problems of micro-states etc) may be needed to establish possible patterns for the future of residual small territories. Finally, Research department may be able to help with the enquiries which regional Dependent Territories departments have tended increasingly to put to Gibraltar and General department rather than to Research department.
Future Structure
5. The guidance note on the section's responsibilities represents what seems to us a misconception of the proper role of the section. The General section should be both the core of Dependent Territories policy making and the coordinator of aid policy for the Dependent Territories. It has admittedly been responsible in the past year both for coordinating the drafting of a despatch to Governors on the future of the Dependent Territories and for coordinating an exercise on internal security in Dependent Territories. But the role has been passive rather than active. It has been the General section who have collected and put together the views of others. The policy making has generally become subordinate to a research function which the section has assumed for the Dependent Territories Division as a whole in the absence of other sources of advice.
6. We have recommended in Part I of this report that the Head of Gibraltar and General department should be formally entrusted with overall responsibility for the formulation of general Dependent Territories policy matters. We have also récommended that he should become responsible for coordinating aid policy for the Dependent Territories insofar as this needs to be coordinated in the FCO. We recommend that the General section should have responsibility under the Head of Gibraltar and General department for initiating and coordinating policy papers on Dependent Territories' affairs and for forward thinking and planning. Planning should include economic and staff matters. There may for example be need of a forecast of staff requirements over the next
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