TNAG-1225-FCO40-1538-Visits-to-the-UK-by-official-and-unofficial-members-of-the-E-1983 — Page 31

CONFIDENTIAL

HKK 026/5.

(10).

Ma Clift (HKD)

Tel home

21/

no 1825/? Chash?

109

Visit to London by Governor of Hong Kong and EXCO

Unofficials:

Records

Thank you for your minute of 19 July. The Secretary of State is content to proceed as you propose provided that the Unofficials are merely shown the record, under very secure conditions as you suggest, and with the statement about not querying the text. There should be no question of the record being given to the Unofficials.

On the future, he wonders whether, if we are to come under regular pressure from the Unofficials to see our records of meetings,

we should not make the practice of taking minutes more in the style of Cabinet meetings (i.e. without direct attribution to individual speakers). The direct attribution obviously raises a number of difficulties, not least that it would be difficult to resist the Unofficials seeking to query a remark specifically attributed to one of their number which he or she with support from the others

recorded.

-

claimed to have been wrongly understood or

I should be grateful for advice on this point and I hope that we shall be careful in the meanwhile not to give the Unofficials any reason to believe that we are undertaking to show them in future records in the same style as those presently at issue.

Ори

20 July 1983

cc:

PS/Mr Luce PS/PUS

Mr Giffard Mr Donald

(B JP Fall)

CONFIDENTIAL

THIS IS A COPY

THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN

LLO CLOSED FOR

6

40

YEARS UNDER FOI EXEMPTION No. 4 and 27(1)