Just leaving this here in case anybody comes up against the same problem in future....

I wanted to give a member of staff read-only access to Staff Contracts in SIMS.net. (Autumn 2012 release, 7.148)

None of the built-in groups in System Manager seemed to offer the level of access I wanted, so I created my own.

I granted the group read-only access to staff details (by selecting "Staff" from the permissions list and clicking "Set View").

However, when the user logged on and opened the staff details page, the "Contract" and "Service Agreement" panels (under section 8. Employment Details) were completely missing.

Eventually, after experimenting with Permissions, I found the answer was to enable the "P7 Field Trial" permission, under Personnel.

This solved the problem and the Contract and Service Agreement panels then appeared, allowing read-only access.