TNAG-2097-FCO40-2986-HM-Overseas-Civil-Service-(HMOCS)-general-correspondence-1990 — Page 104

should not be burdened by paying supplements in respect of the SAR element of any SAR pension. That, however, is a matter of policy.

6.

It may be useful if I set out here the position of continued membership of HMOCS by Hong Kong civil servants after 1997. The Regulations for HMOCs set out in the Appendix to Colonial 306 provide that persons who are members of HMOCS and who continue to serve a successor government in a public office continue as "serving members" of HMOCS. If my recollection is correct colonial civil servants who continued to serve the Governments of successor independent States in the sixties remained members of HMOCS. The practical advantages of this were very limited then and would be nil at the present time. Their eligibility for compensation and for the protection for their service and pensions will have become fixed before members of HMOCS in Hong Kong start serving the successor and such obligations as HMG might assume on a failure of the SAR to pay pensions would, no doubt, be dependent on former service in HMOCS (as it is for SPOS) rather than later service under the SAR. The prospect of transfer or promotion to other dependencies is so limited as to be non-existent. continue to be regarded as a serving member, or a non-serving member, of HMOCS has, therefore, little meaning and it would be an option for HMG to decide that, with effect from 1 July 1997, it would not regard officers serving the SAR as members of HMOCS.

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7. I do not think that HMG are compelled to take that decision by the terms of JD 76 and BL 101. Membership of HMOCS has never been a status involving a separate loyalty to the Crown in right of the UK and it is in no way inconsistent with such membership that "foreign nationals shall be employed only in their individual capacities and shall be responsible to the government of the Region" (BL 101). Compare paragraph 11 of Cmnd 1193: "It is important also that both the Governments and the officers concerned should appreciate that although members of [HMOCS] are members of a common service under Her Majesty they are during their service in a particular territory, the servants of the Government of that territory and employed by it, and owe their full loyalty to it". I would not, however, expect the Chinese to appreciate the subtlety of that view.

8.

The issues then are:-

(a) are we, or are the persons concerned, given any advantage or

comfort by our considering the latter as continuing to be members of HMOCS while they continue to hold office under the SAR.

For HMG I can see no advantage: such an arrangement might well be invoked to assert that HMG continues to have some, however undefined, responsibility for the individuals concerned even though HMG will have no power and no function. Some members of HMOCS who continue to serve may, however, find some comfort in a continued, however tenuous, relationship with HMG which their retention of a titular membership of HMOCS would support;

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