It is not possible, as we said before, to quantify the overall costs of services which refugees now use or in future may choose to use. Those services, which are not, as you know, provided by the Home Office, are not monitored to establish refugee usage. The numbers in prospect are in any event small when compared to the population as a whole and the burden on any one service is unlikely to be unmanageable especially when arrival is to be spread over 2 years.
I should therefore be glad if you would consider the amendments to the draft joint minute enclosed (paragraphs 5 and 12) and let me know whether this is sufficient for your immediate purposes. We can of course, in slower time, have more detailed discussions on the history of Home Office grant aid to the refugee voluntary organisations in respect of Vietnamese refugees if you would find this helpful. Essentially however withdrawal remains our aim: it is the fact of a new intake which means that we cannot yet move further towards this.
FCO would like to get the minute into the weekend box since the Foreign Secretary is particularly keen to put it forward early next week. Perhaps you could let me know by telephone whether you are content with this approach.
So far as the PES implications are concerned, we must reserve the Home Secretary's right to put forward a bid in PES 89 and I do not think we could reasonably ask the Prime Minister to agree to announce a policy affecting only 1989-90.
I have sent a copy of this letter to John Hayzelden in our Finance Division and to Robert Footman in the FCO.
CONFIDENTIAL
MRS BH FAIR
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