Contribution
My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group, also signed by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. It is a probing amendment seeking to ensure that all relevant records, including digital messages and communications, are retained and disclosed to an inquiry or investigation.
Due to some issues during Covid relating to investigations about ministerial communications using WhatsApp and other social media, it was clear that there was a gap in perception about the collection of digital records. That is why I have specifically listed them in my amendment; I am sure that more and more of us are now using social media for more formal discussions than was ever anticipated because of the speed of response.
But it is worse than just having to think about what we do with digital messages. It took the Hillsborough families 20 years and the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s work for them to get full disclosure. One of the groups said:
“An awful load had been redacted and the police were told not to put anything in their notebooks. It took us 20 odd years to get disclosure, it doesn’t matter what’s in it, warts, and all, give us the disclosure, otherwise you don’t know what you’re up against. [There are] reams of evidence I want to look at but it’s up to the chair”
of the independent panel and
“[I] think it should be mandatory for us to see all the evidence we choose”.
It is clear that data must be kept and recorded. In this day and age, that goes beyond notebooks and must include digital evidence too. More importantly, this will strengthen transparency and ensure that all inquiries and investigations can do their job and thereby strengthen accountability.
Amendment 29 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, which I have signed, is also a probing amendment, to elucidate whether the intention is that information record-keeping be completed as standard by public authorities in accordance with the Public Records Act 1958. I have signed it because I think it is helpful for the Minister to be specific. I refer back to my probing amendments on whether digital records in all their forms—current, a few past and future—would also be included in this.
Amendment 10, also laid by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, would ensure that unused material is protected in an annex, which the chair of the inquiry can access as required if it is relevant. This, too, is helpful and might have assisted some of the Hillsborough families in the example that I gave earlier. All the amendments in this group seek to protect information, as information keeping becomes more and more complex. We know that in some of the inquiries from years ago, retention of traditional data was inconsistent—and worse, the rules about retaining data were unclear enough for people to behave badly.
None of this is new in the decades since investigation inquiries started into the infected blood scandal. In the Lord Archer of Sandwell inquiry of 2007 to 2009, a whole chapter of his report was dedicated to the missing evidence and documents. Just one example suffices. The ministerial papers of Lord Owen had been destroyed, probably not with his knowledge. The report said:
“We have been unable to ascertain who carried out the destruction of the papers, and who gave the instructions. But the conclusion appears inescapable that some official made a decision which he or she had no authority to make, or that someone was guilty of a serious error of judgement”.
Then Sir Brian Langstaff’s Infected Blood Inquiry, which reported in 2024, found that in 2019, after the Lord Archer report had been published, around 450 files had been taken from the archives by staff from the Department of Health and Social Care and not returned, sparking concerns among campaigners that the department was attempting a cover-up.
There are also the nuclear veterans’ investigations, which have been hampered by the disappearance of much of the medical data of the servicemen who were present at the UK atomic tests. The MoD consistently denied it had the data, but in August of this year, the Mirror revealed that the files had been held at a secret MoD laboratory. The nuclear tests happened in the 1950s and such secrecy hampered conclusions on the damages to servicemen, many of whom are dying. The fact that this practice has been repeated ever since by public officials within the Civil Service, the NHS and other bodies makes it clear that we have to be specific about data retention. This Bill is the place to do that. I look forward to the Minister’s response. The Bill provides the perfect opportunity to ensure that, in future, as part of the duty of candour, there is a responsibility to keep data appropriately and honestly to facilitate any future investigation or inquiry. I beg to move.