§ Mr. ByersTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many(a) top secret and (b) secret files his Department holds.
§ Mr. Jack[holding answer 24 November 1994]: This Department operates a de-centralised record-keeping system and no central records, either of files or of its individual classification, are kept. There is unlikely to be a great number of top secret and secret files but because no central record is kept in MAFF to obtain this information by a departmental inquiry to all the various registries would be time consuming and at a disproportionate cost.