CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL
FROM: C O Hum
DATE: 9 June 1992
CC: Mr Ricketts, HKD
Sir J Coles
COMMUNICATIONS WITH HONG KONG
1. Thank you for your minute of 5 June, which I have discussed with Mr Ricketts.
2. We both think that it should be possible to establish a system for communicating with Hong Kong after Mr Patten's arrival with only slight modifications of the existing procedures. Some of the details will depend on Mr Patten's preferences and be for him to settle once he has seen how Government House operates. These include, for example, whether he will wish to handle the most personal papers entirely on his own or to depute a close adviser (presumably Mr Dinham) to do so, and to what extent he wants other communications to be addressed to him or sent in his name.
3. Subject to these points, we suggest that we discuss with Mr Patten the separation of telegrams into three categories:
a) "Strictly Personal for Governor". We assume that these would be very few and far between. Mr Patten would probably wish to handle them physically himself. Use could in addition be made of the prefix "Deyou", which would be a procedure familiar to the communications officers in Government House. This would ensure that telegrams in this category were received by him personally. Alternatively if he wished to give Mr Dinham the responsibility of dealing: with telegrams in this category, use of the prefix would mark out those telegrams that really were for Mr Patten's eyes only;
b) "Personal for Governor" This prefix would ensure, subject to the exact arrangements made at the Hong Kong end, that an incoming telegram was given no distribution within the Hong Kong Government machine until it had been seen by Mr Patten or a person/persons designated by him (Mr Dinham? Hoare?);
c) telegrams without preamble. These would as now be automatically circulated round the Hong Kong bureaucracy.
Mr
EV1AAL
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CO Hum
CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL
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