DAVAAF
PS/Mr Maude
I submit a draft reply.
Peter Bottomley Esq MP
House of Commons
London SWIA OAA
M V Stone, HKD
30 March 1990
Your Private Secretary wrote to me on 5 January enclosing a letter from Mr W M McIntyre of Hong Kong about the future of expatriate officers in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force who are members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS).
Mr McIntyre raises a number of matters of concern to many expatriate officers in the territory arising from the transfer of sovereignty/in 1997. I am well aware of these having talked to expatriate officers during my visit to Hong Kong last Autumn.
It may be helpful if I briefly explain the background to HMOCS and to the Public Officers' Agreement to which Mr McIntyre refers in his letter. Firstly, in common with our former colonies, the Hong Kong Government, and not the British Government, is responsible for terms and conditions of service of its public servants, including the award and payment of pensions. In the early 1950s, HMOCS was set up by HMG to include officers who were appointed to serve overseas either by the Secretary of State or the Crown Agents. Because the Secretary of State accepted a special obligation towards this group, HMG undertook to safeguard their conditions of service when the territory in which they were serving went into independence. This was achieved by means of a Public Officers' Agreement drawn up by HMG and the newly independent Government under which the latter undertook to protect the terms and conditions of service and the pensions of those public servants who had been members of HMOCS prior to independence.
Many of the POA clauses are already written in to the Sino British Joint Declaration on the question of Hong Kong. This provides that, after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Governmnet in 1997, British and other foreign nationals previously
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