TNAG-0878-FCO40-1088-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 152

3

CODE 18-77

No Mishaven

was as

Confidential

Reference

Meeting at the Treasury on 4 Jan.

to Discuss Vietnamese Refugees.

ม

(96

the attached note is a fairly garbled record of what was actually said at last week's meeting (para 7 is particularly inaccurate). However, I doubt if this matters since theoutcome, in the form of the Home Secretary's reply to the Sofs's letter, good as could be expected, especially insofar as it put firmly on the record the Home Office's recognition of Hong Kong's special problems and the UK's special responsibility towards them (you would not realize it from the attached record, but this in fact reflected the point, made by the FCO representatives at the meeting). It is depressing though to see the strong built-in assumption that administrative poredives are more important than policy initiatives, and that if the latter

long cannot be made to fit into the former it will be a tedions struggle to get them accepted against the inertia of

the Civil Sevice machine.

PA

言

W.E. Chantill

"1/1

HKK 245/4

RECEIVED IN REGIST: NO. 51

12 JAN 1979

DESK OFF

INDEX

No

PA

P

ction

CLE