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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
27 November 1992
Sir John Boyd KCMG TOKYO
Der John,
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE SURVEY: IMPLICATIONS FOR NORTHERN ASIA
1.
I wrote to you (and to the other Heads of Post in my command) on 26 November about the outcome of this year's Public Expenditure Survey (PES) round and the implications for Northern Asia. I explained that I had been tasked to contribute to an exercise intended to achieve total savings of £10m in 1995/96. My contribution will form part of a sum to be secured by savings in our largest posts. Inevitably this means that I have to turn to you: the cost of the Embassy in Tokyo is roughly half the total cost of all the posts in my command, and nearly four times as great as the costs of the next most expensive post in the area.
2.
My task is to submit a paper illustrating how it would be possible to offer up savings of £235,000. (For the purposes of the exercise we will be basing ourselves on 1991/92 figures.) Ideally I think I should put forward a menu of options, illustrating a number of different ways of reaching that total.
3.
I imagine that the key financial information is already available to you, but I attach two papers for ease of reference. These are:
(i)
a table setting out the allocation of FCO resources in Northern Asia;
(ii)
a table setting out the savings which could be made if an officer of each rank was withdrawn from post.
The first of these tables covers not only salaries but also FCO programme expenditure. It is legitimate for me to put forward suggestions for cuts in this expenditure, even though it does not directly come under my control.
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