CONFIDENTIAL
these jobs were now much more demanding than they used to be. Diffi- cult decisions often had to be taken quickly, and senior Government servants had had to accustom themselves to defending those decisions. to the press and on television in the absence of Ministers senior civil servants had to be politicians as well.
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7. We had some discussion about the possibilities of recruitment from outside. I suggested that, with the fair wind now given to the concept of "interchange" it might become easier than in the past to get good people from Whitehall to go to Hong Kong on secondment. Mr Rowlands said that secondments had their place but there was no escaping the fact that Hong Kong would have to rely primarily on its own resources. In his view the answer was more and better career planning, with a proper programme of secondments, attachments and sabatticals so that existing talent could be identified and developed. He was looking into all this.
8. I asked Mr Rowlands to ensure that we were consulted on all appointments likely to be of interest to Ministers, whether or not there was a formal requirement to obtain the Secretary of State's (or The Queen's) approval. I gave the Secretary for Social Services and the Secretary for Security as examples of the kind of appointments I had in mind. Mr Rowlands showed some resistance to the idea of seek- ing approval for what he regarded as normal postings but took note.
Localisation
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9. Mr Rowlands thought that reasonable progress had been made but the process could and should be taken a great deal further (he was highly critical of his predecessors in the 1960's for failing to plan ahead properly) But there were practical obstacles - it was, for example, very difficult to recruit suitable Chinese in mid-career and it had to be borne in mind that people in Hong Kong were not interested in localisation for its own sake. They wanted good Government and were not too concerned about who supplied it.
Wandum
29 August 1978
cc: Mr Cortazzi
Mr Murray OLA
R JT McLaren
Hong Kong and General Department
CONFIDENTIAL
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