§ Mr. Ellisasked the Prime Minister what special arrangements the Government are making to release the official records of the 1939–45 war.
§ The Prime MinisterOn 9th March, 1966, I informed the House that the Government had decided that the "closed" period for public records should be reduced from 50 to 30 years; and this change was put into effect by the Public Records Act, 1967. In consequence the records of the 1939–45 war will begin to be released on 1st January, 1970. Thereafter under the normal operation of the rule the remainder of the war records would unfold in annual batches over a period ending on 1st January, 1976. The Government, recognise, however, that such a piecemeal release of the wartime papers might be frustrating to historians and others wishing to study topics covering the war as a whole; and they have therefore considered how they might best reduce these difficulties by arrangements analogous to those made in respect of the records of the 1914–18 war, which were 413W released in a single operation in 1966. It would be out of the question to adopt precisely the same procedure in the case of the 1939–45 records. In the aggregate they occupy nearly seven miles of shelving; and this in itself makes it administratively impracticable to release them all in a single operation at an early date. But the Government have decided, with the agreement of the right hon. Gentlemen the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party, and with the gracious consent of Her Majesty The Queen in respect of Cabinet records, to accelerate the process of release as far as possible and to complete it by a date early in 1972 as regards those papers which would be most likely to satisfy public interest and to meet the needs of the vast majority of historians working on the main military, political and administrative aspects of the 1939–45 war. If this result is to be achieved, the less important papers may have to suffer some delay. But the papers of 1939 and 1940 will continue to be released under the Thirty-Year Rule on the due dates, i.e. 1st January, 1970, and 1st January, 1971, respectively; and the most significant of the remaining records, in the sense which I have described, will then be released in a single operation early in 1972. The necessary authority will be conferred at an appropriate time by an Instrument issued by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor under the authority granted him by Section 5(1) of the Public Records Act, 1958; and corresponding arrangements will be made administratively to secure the release of any records of this description which are held in the Scottish Record Office.