DSR 11C
3
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5. Mr Haddon-Cave thought that the Hong Kong Government should fulfil its role as trustee, which meant that regard must be paid to the attitudes of local people, and he feared that there was no sympathy in London for this view. Mr Stewart disagreed, pointing out that there was much sympathy in London, but that Whitehall had to take account of pressures from Parliament. Furthermore, account had
to be taken of the attitudes of Ministers both within the FCO and in other Departments. He thought that there could be different views as to how the responsibility for the Hong Kong people should be borne.
6. He said that there were three rough categories of
Critical or people concerned with Hong Kong: (i) those who thought that colonies were immoral, (ii) those who wished to embarrass the British Government, and (iii) those who were genuinely concerned about the workers in Hong Kong. It was necessary that all these critics should be answered.
7. Mr Haddon-Cave asked again for dialogue and debate on the budget. He said that there had been exchanges but not dialogue, and that positions had been taken up both in Hong Kong and in London. The Hong Kong position was well documented but this was not the case with the London
position. Mr Smith pointed out that it was possible for Hong Kong to have a well-documented case because it had many civil servants to do the documentation, whereas in Whitehall there were only a handful of officials to deal with Hong Kong.
8. After a brief exchange on the statistics prepared by Hong Kong, Mr Stewart brought the discussion round to the
budget again, referring specifically to the use/den
the Financial Secretary of guidelines for which Lord Goronwy- Roberts had a particular dislike. He invited Mr Smith to detail some of the criticisms of the budget. Mr Smith did this, pointing out that there were many questions which could be raised such as why the budget concentrated on growth rather than welfare, why a certain figure was fixed for tax
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