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4. The purpose of HMOCs was to provide officers with an ongoing career to normal retirement age and to reassure them that they would be looked after by HMG if circumstances changed so that their expectations of a career could not be met. The three applicants do not fall within this objective given that they are past retirement age. It would therefore be open to us to reject their applications.
5.
On the other hand, the applicants meet all the stated
criteria for membership of HMOCS and there is no specific rule that an officer must be below retirement age at the time of his application.
6. The three judicial officers will have retired by 1997 and will therefore not be eligible for any compensation arrangements that HMG may put in place. But if they are permitted to become members of HMOCS, they would be eligible for any (sterling safeguard) pension protection that is put in place. If we deny them membership, following the Minister's agreement to Mr Rickett's submission of 2 September that any pension protection should apply only to HMOCS officers, they would not be eligible to be so protected.
7.
The Hong Kong Government has confirmed that no more applications from over retirement age members of the Judiciary or from other officers will be submitted: this is thus the extent of this particular problem. The three applicants are senior and influential members of the Judiciary.
They will object strongly if we deny them membership of HMOCS. As the
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