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HMOCS: INFORMAL DISCUSSIONS WITH TREASURY OFFICIALS
SUMMARY
Informal discussions with Treasury officials reveal some possible scope for agreement. Advice sought on whether the Governor would wish the issue to be addressed at OPD (K) on 1 July and/or whether you think the avenues set out below are worth exploring.
DETAIL
2. In the light of the Cabinet Office paper and a recent change in officials in the Treasury, we thought it worthwhile to hold an informal discussion with them to see whether there might be any scope for reaching a solution which we could recommend to Ministers. This discussion was held without prejudice to either side's position: we took care to point out that we were not in a position to make any proposals which deviated from the Secretary of State's proposal; the Treasury for their part said that they could not second-guess Mr Portillo. (The flavour may be taken from one Treasury official's characterization of it as a non-meeting''EXCLAM).
3.
The main points of the discussion were as follows.
COMPENSATION SCHEME
The Treasury officials said they might be prepared to recommend a scheme which would cost in the order of 40 million pounds: this would effectively split the difference between the estimated cost of our proposal and the Treasury's proposal. They thought this could be achieved by amending our proposal either to include Lower factors, or reduce the cap, or reduce the number of eligible officers.
We have examined whether there might be scope within a ceiling of around 40 million pounds to present an acceptable
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.