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9.
Our Legal Consultant's advice is that, if challenged on a judicial review, we could justifiably maintain that there is no past practice for HMG safeguarding the sterling value of pensions on a change of sovereignty and, therefore, no grounds for such an expectation as regards any pensionable officer. And, so far as we are aware, nothing has been said by or
on behalf of HMG in relation to the Hong Kong public service
which can be construed as giving any one other than members of HMOCS grounds for believing that HMG will provide any benefits or seek any further safeguards other than those set out in the
JD.
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10. We can expect this group of non-HMOCS pensionable
officers to seek clarification of our policy when we announce any safeguard arrangements for HMOCS members. We thus need to
consider what line we will take. Our first line should be as
above adequate arrangements are already in place in the JD.
If that failed to hold, the second line would be to say that
it would be for the government of the day to decide what to do in any given set of circumstances. This line was deployed in a number of replies to MPs in 1985 when enquiries were made as
to what we would do if the relevant provisions in the JD were
somehow not met. As a last resort we could consider
introducing a policy which took some account of the connection
of the individuals to the UK. There seems to be little logic
in someone who has retired to India and may never have even
visited the UK to be able to have his pension safeguarded in
sterling terms. If something has to be done it might be
appropriate to look at maintaining the value of the pension in
terms of the currency of the country in which the officer has
retired.
P F Ricketts
sub.pens.ADMIN
JEB
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