§ Mr. George Cunninghamasked the Prime Minister if she will publish in the Official Report the text of the current guidance on the availability to Ministers of one Administration of the papers of a previous Administration.
§ The Prime MinisterThe guidance to officials on the availability to Ministers of one Administration of the papers of a previous Administration is as follows:
"Access by Ministers to Documents of a Former Administration
It is an established rule that after a General Election a new Administration does 306W not have access to the papers of a previous Administration of a different political complexion. This rule applies especially to Cabinet papers.
The general principle is clear. An incoming Minister should not have access to any minutes or documents written by a predecessor of a different Party other than those which were published or put in the public domain by that predecessor; nor should he be told—whether directly or by access to departmental papers which would tell him—exactly what his predecessor had said. Moreover, it may be equally important to withhold papers which show the advice given by officials to the previous Minister even though there may be no indication on them of his views.
On the other hand, the national interest requires that there should be some continuity of policy. The arguments for continuity are stronger in certain fields than in others. Foreign policy is generally recognised as providing the classic example of a field in which continuity is important; but there are other fields in which some at least of the work of departments ought to continue on broadly the same lines as before. Under modern conditions it is not practicable for departments to make a completely fresh start with all their work.
There is no neat formula which can be used to reconcile the general principle with the practical considerations which sometimes point in the opposite direction. Departments use their discretion in making the best reconciliation possible in each individual case. It is one thing to give an incoming Minister a general account of the basis of departmental policy in a particular field under the preceding Administration and another to allow him to examine the particular personal views of his predecessor on certain points. On personal matters such as these, especially when the political content is high, a department is expected to be very discreet about what outgoing Ministers have said or thought. On the other hand there may be no objection to showing an incoming Minister, e.g. a report which his predecessor saw but on which action remains to be taken, or documents which were made widely available outside Government. It may be possible to draw a distinction between documents recording the way in which decisions were reached and documents announcing these decisions. The guiding line must be to avoid embarrassment to previous Ministers.
Nor can there be any standard action in those cases where departments feel that incoming Ministers have a need to know. Some papers, e.g. reports, may, if appropriate, be suitable for showing to new Ministers as they stand. In other cases, e.g. where the outgoing Minister was personally involved or expressed views on paper, the requirement can be met by preparing a summary of what was at issue and the action taken without showing incoming Ministers the actual documents which came before the previous Administration. In any instance (whether an individual case or not) where it is decided that papers of the previous Administration ought to be disclosed to a new Government, difficulty may be avoided if, as a matter of courtesy, the 307W former Minister is consulted before this is done.
It is questionable whether in this context a distinction can be drawn between departmental papers about policy matters and those about individual cases. Individual case work often has a substantial political (if not policy) content, and the possibility of embarrassment could be just as real if a Minister were able to learn about the personal views of his predecessor on the handling of an individual case as it would be in matters of another kind. And, in any event, it is not easy in practice to draw a hard and fast line between case work, and policy. Although, therefore, it is a fair generalisation that papers on case work are less likely to cause difficulty than papers on policy, departments should nevertheless bear in mind the main objective—to protect Ministers from the political embarrassment that would arise if their successors saw documents that it was not appropriate for them to see."
§ Mr. George Cunninghamasked the Prime Minister who authorised the guidance on availability of papers of one Administration to Ministers of a later Administration set out in the enclosure to her letter to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury dated 21 December 1979; and what consultation has taken place between Government and Opposition parties on that guidance.
§ The Prime MinisterThe guidance and the conventions which it embodies have been accepted by successive Administrations of both parties for many years. The guidance has not been the subject of specific consultation between the parties. The basic rule was endorsed by the last Government in their reply of March 1978 to the eleventh report of the Select Committee on Expenditure (Cmnd. 7117.).