§ Lord TrefgarneMy Lords, I should like to make a personal statement.
In the course of my reply to the Unstarred Question of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, on 2nd December I said that the correspondence of earlier Administrations is not available to Ministers in this Government. I am now advised that what I said was not quite correct; in general Ministers do not have free access to the papers of the previous Administration, but it was going too far to imply that all correspondence with third parties is barred. It remains the case that I had not, in fact, seen the letter quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon; but my statement of the general position was not accurate and I must apologise for unwittingly misleading the House.