§ Mr. Adam Hunterasked the Attorney-General, in view of the fact that minutes of meetings of advisory bodies at the head of Government Departments include a sederunt of the persons present at the meetings, if he will indicate on whose authority the records are destroyed.
§ The Attorney-GeneralThe records of advisory bodies appointed by Ministers are public records. The Public Records Act 1958 requires the responsible Minister to make arrangements for the selection of those records which ought to be 571W permanently preserved and for their safekeeping. Records which are not selected for permanent preservation are destroyed once their value for current administrative purposes has expired. In the case of advisory bodies the records of the secretariat are treated as the official record, and any copies held by other Departments are destroyed in due course.