"Wynering"
Sheet Common Nr. Petersfield Hants GU31 5AT
19 April 1990
Thank you for your letter of 9 April with its reiteration of the position of the Hong Kong Government on pensions.
We are pursuing the question of currency protection of the pensions for HMOCS members with Robin McLaren of the FCO, and in particular the difference of opinion between HMG and HKG which you admit, but may I take this further with you when I am in Hong Kong in early May ?
Hong Kong pensions were discussed at some length at the last Council meeting of the Overseas Services Pensioners Association on 29 March when I was still hopeful of some progress with you; and the subject will come up again at our Annual General Meeting on 31 May, when I shall report on our conversation, and meetings I hope to have with OSPA members in the AECS and members of the RHKP Superintendents Association who have been in touch with us, with a view to seeing the Governor. The morale of expatriates in the Police and Civil Service is very much tied to this question of pensions, as you know, and I am sure that HE will be interested in what serving officers say to me, quite apart from the growing alarm of pensioners here at the differences between HKG and HMG on the onus for protection of the value of pensions of HMOCS members.
You mention that " HMG has accepted a special obligation towards members of HMOCS and EXCO therefore considers the question of sterling safeguards for them a matter for HMG If by this you mean SPOS, EXCO will have to be disabused of the notion that the scheme provides sterling safeguards for HMOCS since the rules were changed in 1976. The purpose of SPOS is to make up the difference between basic increases of pension in the Home Civil Service and HMOCS, not, repeat not, to provide sterling safeguards for HMOCS. If you mean something else we, and presumably HMG, will be interested to hear what it is. In any event you will wish to be sure that EXCO has not been misled to take the view you quote - a very serious matter.
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As regards pension adjustments, I am sorry that you have concluded that the doctrine of equal misery will still apply by sticking to CPI(A) for all despite admitting that the Hang Seng CPI relates to some. When this is put to the Governor in Council for his decision, as I believe it should, I trust that it will be in the context of the argumentation I advanced with my letter of 12 March for the alternatives of the Hang Seng CPI or pension increases related to salary increases in the Civil
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