HC Deb 20 July 1993 vol 229 c91W
Mr. Allason

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to declassify and release to the Public Record Office Government code and cypher school decrypts of intercepted pre-war and wartime Japanese diplomatic wireless traffic.

Mr. Hurd

The decrypts shown to Sir Winston Churchill when Prime Minister, referred to in the Open Government White Paper at chapter 2 and annex D, include selected translations of wartime Japanese diplomatic messages. The papers are being reviewed and it should be possible to make them available in the next nine months.

Other wartime and earlier records of the Government code and cypher school will be reviewed thereafter. These records also include translations of pre-war Japanese diplomatic messages; I cannot at this time say exactly when these records will reach the Public Record Office.

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