PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AH
DR Ford Esq OBE MVO Secretary for Information Government Secretariat HONG KONG
Telephone 01-
Your reference
Our reference
Date
23 May 1979
Annex D
My dew Laird
",
1. This is to thank you for the simply splendid programme you arranged for me during my visit to Hong Kong and to say how very grateful I am to you for your hospitality.
2. The visits to the refugee camps and to the Tuen Mun new town have certainly given me a good deal of food for thought.
3. It will, of course, take a day or two for me to straighten out the various impressions I got of information work in Hong Kong and I hope you will agree that it would be valuable if we exchanged notes from time to time on our thoughts about this.
4. Two points come to mind immediately. Firstly, you said you would take discreet soundings about some relaxation of the rigid rules about no briefing, even off the record, on UK views on controversial subjects. This is obviously a highly delicate area, but I think we agreed that it would be useful if Derek March could be provided with material setting out our views which he could use discreetly in response to enquiries. Clearly there would be great advantage if you and he were in touch on subjects of this kind.
5. Secondly, an area which particularly interests me is the use made of OID Background Briefs (copies of which will in future be sent to you direct) and unattributable material on worldwide international issues. As I understand it, the Political Adviser's Office use these for briefing within the Hong Kong Government but, with the exception of those on China and Indo-China, they are not passed to people outside the Government Service. Clearly Hong Kong is the centre of a number of prestigious regional organs which might well repay some attention (I am thinking, for example, of the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asian Wall Street Journal). There are also, as I discovered at your party, a number of energetic free- lancers who by no means confine all their attention to Hong Kong.
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
2 4
/I
i
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.