accordance with the relevant tables to take account of increases in salary, age and length of service. In addition, agreements (called Public Officers Agreements) between the United Kingdom and the newly independent country concerned provided for:
(d) ensuring to officers who remained in the service of the territory, conditions of service and the retention of pensions laws no less favourable those applicable before the appointed day; (e) a right to have pensions paid in relevant overseas countries;
(f) a guarantee that payments of pensions outside the territory concerned would be made so as to produce the sterling equivalent at the rate of exchange in force on the appointed day.
Items (e) and (f) are not provided for in the White Papers, and the arrangement for the sterling guarantee is replaced and made more certain as respects those territories where HMG has taken over the responsibility for paying pensions. 7. Expatriate officers recruited to the permanent and pensionable establishment of Hong Kong up to 1985 continued to be eligible to become members of HMOCS (though there is, apparently some question concerning the machinery whereby judges were afforded comparable eligibility) and certain contract officers have been informed that they will also be eligible if they opt to join the pensionable establishment before 30th June this year. It has been the practice of
the Secretary of State to admit those who are eligible for membership. There is no advantage or consequence for officers joining HMOCS other than the prospect that they will be eligible to benefit from the conditions outlined in the 1954 White Paper and further elaborated in the 1961 White Paper (there is no suggestion that there is any right to particular terms), and the British Government accept that the circumstances of Hong Kong are COMPARABLE TO THOSE OF A TERRITORY ATTAINING SELF GOVERNMENT. It can hardly be denied, therefore, that it is entirely reasonable for Hong Kong officers who are members of HMOCS to expect that provision will be made for them comparable to that which has been made for HMOCS officers elsewhere. Even if the British Government did not previously appreciate the extent of such expectations, it must be clear from the visit of the FCO/ODA team to Hong Kong last week mmkand the reactions of the Hong Kong members of HMOCS to the current proposals for a scheme that such expectations are widespread and deeply held.
8. Apart from the Hong Kong Government's limited compensation scheme, the arrangements made or proposed for HMOCS in Hong Kong on the change of sovereignty are such that it can be reasonably asserted that they accord with the conditions and principles set out in the White Papers and with the generality of previous practice in two respects only: there is an agreement between the United Kingdom and China that for officers who remain in the service of the SAR the conditions of service will be no less favourable than they were beforehand and that pension benefits for Hong Kong officers and their dependents will be similarly safeguarded. As for the rest:
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