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limited circumstances in which it would be possible under the
Bill for me to decline to act on the Governor's recommendation.
The main area of vulnerability in London would be in respect of
the Approved Secondment Scheme were this to be pursued.
The Garrison
31.
In his letter to me of 21 December, the Defence Secretary
asked for 2,000 of the 50,000 places to be set aside for locally
engaged personnel (who, as uniformed soldiers, perform a wide range of military functions in the Garrison) and civilians.
There are 4,000 such staff and, the Defence Secretary argues, if
failure to look
to look after their
their interests meant that they fell
substantially below complement, difficulty would be encountered
in running the Garrison and replacements would have to be flown
in from the UK.
32. The purpose of our scheme is to give key personnel who are
emigrating from Hong Kong the confidence to remain up to 1997 and
beyond. The locally engaged staff of the Garrison are not
emigrating in significant numbers, neither will
neither will they remain
employed after 1997. Some will qualify for assurances or
undertakings as Group 1 and 2 personnel under the SSS. As for the rest, in so far as they might be considered "key" people, it
might be open to a very few of the more highly qualified to
apply, in competition with others, under the GAS (for example in
the Engineering category). Numbers likely to qualify would be
small. Nevertheless, it would not, I believe, be right to give
the Garrison a special allocation. That would cause considerable
resentment in HK because it would be seen as HMG looking after
UK, rather than HK, interests. Because the Garrison is HMG's
responsibility, it is up to us to find a solution to the possible
future loss of locally engaged staff. Privatisation of some of
the Garrison functions and the promise of transfer to the main
UK forces on completion of tours of duty appear to be two
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