TNAG-2423-FCO40-3525-Hong-Kong-Her-Majesty-s-Overseas-Civil-Service-(HMOCS)-poli-1992 — Page 90

for a scheme.

question, most recently in Lord Caithness' letter of .1992 to Mr Cartland and by tabling our proposals The issue is not a matter of principle but of price. We are prepared to help, but not to follow the the conditions and principles previously laid down and the It is, practice by which they were previously implemented. of course open to the British Government to alter its policy in this as in other fields. What are our stated grounds for doing so?

13. After much thought, the most we were able to come up with when the FCO/ODA team presented the proposals in Hong Kong was that schemes were tailored to the circumstances of each territory and there were special circumstances relating to Hong Kong which justified a scheme which was different from previous ones. These special circumstances were:

a

(a) the Joint Declaration, and in turn the Basic Law, provided for continuity of employment in territory in which the capitalist system and existing life-style would be unchanged for 50 years, and, unlike other territories there was no active policy of localisation;

can

(b) Hong Kong officers with ten years service retire with a deferred pension; this was not the case in other territories;

(c) the scheme will

will be funded by the the United Kingdom, not the local government and the United Kingdom must have regard to contemporary employment conditions in the United Kingdom and the disparity between the salaries of Hong Kong civil servants and UK civil servants.

Do these reasons hold up?

14.

for

and

various

A very good case can be made that they do not, that, whatever force they may have, they do not provide

for the cogent arguments

kind

we of proposals

have put forward.

The existence of an undertaking for further employment, even though it goes further that the practical opportunities

further employment

to open categories of colonial civil servants and judges in other territories (who, if they continued to serve, enjoyed the benefit of

of Public Officers' Agreements safeguarding their conditions of employment and pensions entitlements) does not provide a continuance of a career under the same kind of conditions as those which the officers presently enjoy. Even if one leaves aside the distrust which many of the officers have expressed of the offer of further employment in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law (and it is not reasonable to expect the members of HMOCS to put their trust in Chinese intentions if we are not willing to consult the Chinese on these issues) and their apprehensions of discrimination by Chinese colleagues, what is on offer is employment by

of a

however part, special, of a dictatorial communist regime a political prospect different

different from the prospect before officers who a position to continue to serve in other former dependent territories. This argument of the opportunity of continued employment, together with the statement that it is the policy of HMG to include provisions which wopuld tend to encourage officers to leave Hong Kong, is advanced

were

not

in

Chinese a

government

7

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