Background
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3.
The Hong Kong Government have told us that the
barracks at Lei Yeu Mun are not now available for
conversion. They have produced a number of other
projects that would provide emergency accommodation for
up to 18,000 people at a cost of up to £ 4.9 million.
One of the proposed projects would alone provide
accommodation for up to 9,000 people.
A.
The Principal Finance Officer's opposite number in
the Treasury has ruled that the Chief Secretary's
original authority was based on accommodating 7,000
people, and that it cannot be stretched beyond the 9,000
people who could be accommodated at a cost of
an
£ 2.5 million by extension to the Whitehead project.
5.
A further complication is that the Press Notice
produced by No. 10 at the time of Sir David Wilson's
meeting with the Prime Minister on 8 June included a
figure of £ 4.5 million as the total available for
emergency accommodation. The Chief Secretary's authority was based on £ 4 million for refurbishing the barracks
plus £ 0.25 million for rents. To avoid any further
difficulty, we propose to meet the difference of
£ 0.25 million from our Unallocated Provision.
6. Our problem remains that we have publicly committed HMG to providing emergency accommodation of
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