CODE 18-77
Faxed to P. fish (CDA) Ан AM 23/vi
Mr Stone
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Noted, discussed &
incorporated
Reference....
12
HKA 233/5
26/6
HMOCS:
JUDICIARY; AND BOUGHT-BACK SERVICE
Bought-back service
1. I have thought further about your draft submission and now feel that we should take the line that pensionable service bought-back since the signing or ratification of the Joint Declaration should not count for compensation purposes. The key point seems to me that the basis of our approach to HMOCS issues should now be fairness, not expediency. Compensation is to be for loss of HMOCS status; there is no logic in allowing a person to buy such status retrospectively and thus to buy the associated compensation: pension is a different matter and I now accept that it would be invidious to deny protection to bought-back pensionable service. (But if contract officers choose to make a fuss and demand consistent treatment, then the logical course would be to limit the application of the sterling safeguard to the period since their application for enrolment in HMOCS too.) It would be an irresponsible use of public funds to allow contract officers to enhance their compensation payments. We should stand as firmly against their unjustified demands as we do against the Treasury's inequitable approach.
2. I am grateful to Mr Fish for his Department's researches into past practice and for his views. But I am strongly of the view that this is a case where past practice, whether justified or not in the previous cases, should not be applied to Hong Kong. It seems to me most unlikely that expectations of improved compensation were a major decision in officers' decisions as to whether to buy back pensionable service (though they could be if we allowed bought-vback service to count even after promulgation of an improved compensation package). Moreover the JD does make the Hong Kong case special: contract officers in previous cases would probably have bought back their previous service before the future constitutional arrangements were settled. Hence my proposal that the cut-off date for bought-back service to count for compensation should be 1984/1985. (In practice officers who applied to join HMOCS up to June 1987 would still have the full ten years' service allowing for maximum compensation. And some officers who joined between then and now would probably be capped anyway, ie their bought-back service would have made no difference anyway. Even if the savings involved in my proposal are relatively modest, I think it is the only fair and responsible approach.)
Judiciary
3.
I think it would be helpful if the submission could give
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