TNAG-2427-FCO40-3529-Hong-Kong-Her-Majesty-s-Overseas-Civil-Service-(HMOCS)-poli-1992 — Page 197

3 August 1992

D G Ballantine Esq

CONFIDENTIAL

Government Actuary's Department

22 Kingsway

LONDON

WC2B 6LE

Dear Grant,

HKA 233/1

Foreign & Commonwealth

Office

File 483)

London SWIA 2AH

Telephone: 071- 270 2650

HONG KONG HMOCS OPTIONS

1.

(482)

Many thanks for your helpful letter of 31 July. It is good news that you expect to be able to complete most of the important calculations within three weeks; we are most grateful.

Number of former contract officers (your para 2)

2.

You ask for a firm figure for the number of contract officers transferring to HMOCS. We have been informed by HKG that 85 police officers have applied to transfer. It is very likely that all these will be approved. Approximately 70 other officers have applied from other departments, including the judiciary. By no means all of these will be successful perhaps half. I think we can therefore now go fairly firm on having an upper figure of 120 contract officers transferring. I suggest that you use the previous police contract officer calculations for the 85 police contract officers (who are generally more junior than current HMOCS officers) and use the "others" (potential HMOCS contract officers) calculations for the remaining 35.

Option C (your para 4)

3.

Subject to Treasury views, I do not think we need trouble you to incorporate a variant of Option B into this calculation for pensions in payment. I think it was the sense of the meeting on 23 July that participation in any such assignment scheme would have to be voluntary. For the sake of exploring a wide range of options it makes sense to show some worst case figures for this option, ie if all officers opt to take part. Frankly, however, we are very doubtful that Ministers will imagine that inviting individual officers and pensioners to take a once-and-for-all gamble of this kind would offer any politically durable solution to the problem we face. To improve the deal for existing pensioners relative to serving officers would not seem likely to increase its political attractions.

hmocs.opts.ADM

SLN

CONFIDENTIAL