authority of which is a communist dictatorship - a prospect significantly different from the prospect before officers
were in 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 not the policy of HMG to include provisions which would tend to encourage officers to leave Hong Kong, is advanced as a reason for providing only one fifth of a sum calculated for the purposes of compensation and for tying the rest to payments made only to those who take up the offer of, and continue in, further employment.
I do not think it would
be difficult for the members of HMOCS in Hong Kong to convince people that, SO far as the offer of further employment in Hong Kong is concerned, it is little more than comparable to the opportunities available to a number, though not all, officers in other territories where full compensation was payable in instalments whether or not they continued in service; that the withholding of the later instalments is coercive rather than an inducement; that it is a perversion of the concept of inducement for continued service in the 1961 White Paper to apply it to the retention of four fifths of a sum which (if the tables were actuarially justifiable) should be used, as they were used in other territories, to calculate compensation for loss of the prospects of continuing in a career such as they had entered upon; or to make capital of the fact that the British Government seems more concerned to pay people to serve a Chinese SAR than in giving effect to the principles which their predecessors established for providing compensation to those who have served it in the past. The United Kingdom has certain obligations under Article 4 of the Joint Declaration up to 30th June 1997, but it has no obligations (though it has an undoubted interest) in respect of good government in the SAR or to encourage members of HMOCS to serve the SAR.
Even if it had such an obligation, how could we even appear to be using the inducement concept to give effect to it by diminishing the sum elsewhere payable as compensation.
15. The assertion that an officer with ten years service may retire with a deferred pension is irrelevant to the question of compensation and of questionable relevance to the issue whether an officer should be entitled to retire with immediate payment of earned pension. In preparation for the visit of the FCO/ODA team to Hong Kong we examined suggestions that using the compensation tables in the proposals would provide compensation advantages for Hong Kong civil servants which were
which were substantially greater than those obtained by members of HMOCS in other territories or than retirement benefit advantages which could be obtained by UK civil servants who are retired e g. for re-organisation reasons. Using 1992 figures, neither of these suggestions proved sustainable in any marked degree. The most that could be said is that Hong Kong salaries are higher and this would provide for higher retiring benefits in the normal course of events, which, of course, means continuing to serve.
Is it not the case that the only policy that
argument for a change
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