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UK: Debate on MI5 file destruction

01 March 1998

During a debate in the House of Commons on 25 February the Home Secretary Jack Straw revealed that: "In 1992, following the end of the cold war, the service [MI5, the internal Security Service] launched a review of its file holdings, and started to destroy documents that were no longer relevant to its requirements and did not need to be retained for statutory or historical purposes" (see Statewatch, vol 8 no 1). The Home Secretary also refused to budge on his highly contentious position that:

"It has to be for the professional judgement of the service itself to decide which files it can safely destroy and which must be retained for operational, statutory or historical reasons."

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker was one of those who has questioned MI5 being allowed to decide which files are to be destroyed and which are to be kept and eventually placed in the Public Records Office (PRO) for use by historians, journalists and others.

Mr Baker had asked the Home Secretary what was the oldest file still being kept secret (that is, not placed in the PRO)? It transpired that it is a file dated 1874, 124 years old, concerning the Irish Secret Service which pre-dated MI5 (founded in 190??). The Home Secretary agreed to put the file in the PRO but said:

"the names of the informants, which were on the file, should be kept secret. Although it is now well over 120 years since the events to which the file relates, given the folk memory in Northern Ireland, if those files were made available, some living individuals could be placed at risk."

House of Commons debate on Security Service files, 25.2.98.