TNAG-2060-FCO40-2938-Hong-Kong-Overseas-Service-Pensioners--Association-(OSPA)-1990 — Page 91

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13,

Mr Stone

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A

OVERSEAS SERVICE PENSIONERS' ASSOCIATION

PRESIDENT:

The Lord Grey of Naunton, GCMG GCVO OBE

SECRETARY:

Mr. C. D. Stenton

MKB

CEIVED IN

233/

'Y

63 CHURCH ROAD

HOVE

SUSSEX

BN3 28D

Your Ref:

Our Ref:

13 AUG 1990

FNMP/RJH/F3HK/F18

Telephone: Brighton (0273) 721630

26

R. A. Burns, Esq.,

Assistant Under Secretary of State (Asia), Foreign & Commonwealth Office,

London,

SW1A 2AH.

Dear Mr. Burns,

In

(24

th

10 July, 1990

Cc: Miss Marsden, HKD

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Thank you for your letter of 5th June in reply to mine of 4th and 25th April to Robin McLaren. Welcome to what is and will no doubt continue to be a very thorny seat!

3017

As I have said in previous correspondence we realise that there are many very difficult issues involving the future of Hong Kong... between now and 1997, and notwithstanding the Joint Declaration the situation after 1997 looks exceedingly uncertain. But as has been emphasised in this correspondence, and particularly in my letters to Mr. Francis Maude, the Minister of State, we feel that failure to deal now with the question of the value and security of pensions paid to those who were members of HMOCS is most unsettling to the morale of the HMOCS officers, including police, still serving in Hong Kong, and that justice is not being done to overseas pensioners.

It is evident from this correspondence that neither Her Majesty's Government nor the Hong Kong Government is prepared to do anything to preserve the sterling value of pensions paid to former members of HMOCS. We are not representing that the Hong Kong Government should "offer a sterling safeguard to their Government servants in general." If locally recruited officers choose to leave Hong Kong in their retirement, that is their choice, and they must do so knowing the exchange effect on the value of their pension. If, as many of them do, they migrate to the United States then the value of their pension is protected by the US/HK$ link. But the great majority of HMOCS officers were recruited from and will mostly retire to their home country, namely Britain. It is for these overseas pensioners that. the sterling value of their pensions must be preserved.

In virtually all other Colonial territories there was a fixed sterling area rate of exchange between sterling and the local currency in which pensions were awarded and paid and then, at indep- endence, there was a Public Officers Agreement which required the independent Government to pay overseas pensions at a fixed sterling exchange rate. The possibility that this might be divisive as between overseas and local pensioners was not an issue which prevented

.....

./.