On the destruction of paper records; again, longish
but for (non-partisan, as ever) background:
I have particular knowledge of this as a historian.
Typically, paper (or 3x5 or 5x8 cards, etc) records, particularly 'Registry Files', were, typically, systematically stored in publicly-owned storage sites if they were not of a sort which were likely to require immediate access for today's administrative purposes in the offices of the Departments which owned them. These were, quite often aircraft hangars on 'disused' airfields (another saga, of course
). There were both at the owning Departments and at the storage sites a small number of 'Registry' staff, often of lowish grades, who diligently kept indexes, shelving records, etc. At the storage sites the staff also tried to keep damp, fire and vermin (hangar cats!) at bay. Some MoD records have been badly damaged by asbestos in a hangar roof, which is now affecting FOIA requests, as they have to be retrieved by staff with protective clothing who then make copies with copiers inside the contaminated areas, with the individual sheets then passed out through a decontaminating hatch process. It is laborious and time-consuming, and some FOIA requesters apparently do not always accept that this is a valid reason for responding to their requests.
Starting in '80s, but particularly in early '90s, there was immense Treasury pressure on all Central and (in England&Wales) Local Government:
a. to outsource to the private sector anything which could be outsourced. This particularly affected jobs previously done by low-paid public servants, including Registry staff. It also included cleaners, messengers, catering, housekeeping, maintenance etc staff. Incidentally, it yielded a misleading impression that public sector wages had gone up: the average had only gone down because the lowest-paid people were no longer 'public sector'. The private sector contractors tendered for a service which initially included, for Registry functions, a commitment that they would 'safely' store all the records, and retrieve for a requesting Department a record in storage within a certain time. Initially the price of this was included in the initial contract, but later, at Treasury insistence, it might be changed so that the contract was to charge an annual fee for every 'shelf-metre' of storage boxes, each box then holding a certain number of files or trays of cards; plus a fee for each retrieval and delivery. These costs had previously been invisible to the requesting officials. That they now were not may be argued to be an improvement, of course; but it did mean that officials were being forced to think 'my budget does not allow me to do my job properly by the citizens I serve; do I bust the budget or do the best job I can within it ?'
b. to create a timetable for release for sale to the highest bidder in the private sector any buildings or estates (such as hangars or the airfields which housed them; but many others) not clearly needed for today's Government business. This included buildings used for current administrative purposes with significant onsite space devoted to Registry functions.
c. to identify and maximise the amount of current and capital savings which these would yield.
The effect of both of these pressures was that Departments (etc) were under great pressure to decide that records of all sorts need not be kept, onsite or at all, especially if a function or whole Department was moving from a larger building to a smaller, or several were being combined in a single building (or site, or town) which had previously been in many. This is reflected, for instance, in the great reduction of HMRC offices and the size and staffing of each. Departments had to decide whether to continue to pay a contractor for long-term storage and retrieval services for paper records, to pay another contractor to digitise all the records (with tricky 'data privacy' issues if the records held personal data such as health or immigration records), or to identify categories of records which were very rarely retrieved and to identify what might be the risks to administrative functions if they were destroyed. 'But something in that lot might be important in future' (to an individual or to some aspect of administration) was not an acceptable reason for paying for retention or retrievability if that sort of thing had not been much retrieved in the last n years.
In my historical researches I have often come across cases of records being destroyed (with a proper record of their destruction) when Registry functions were outsourced or offices consolidated. The residual Registry staff could not have been more helpful or more apologetic, but there was nothing they can do. I fully understood, but I gather some conspiracy theorists have screamed 'cover up' when a FOIA request is thus frustrated.
All the above is
known to me. What is my mere
speculation in the 'landing cards destruction' saga of claim and conterclaim is that:
- for several years until 2009 there were rarely occasions when the diligently preserved and indexed cards of 'landings' from before 1971 needed to be retrieved
- the relevant storage spaces (in the spaces of the Home Office or of its subordinate agencies eg Border Agency) were identified as 'too expensive' to maintain ..
- .. or to have digitised, for which there would have to be demonstrable recent evidence that IT-enabled searches of such 'landings' might be needed
- so that senior staff, challenged by Treasury or Ministers, could not reasonably argue that destruction was unwise, despite warnings from their juniors
But, then, Ministers in a new administration issued Regulation and 'guidance' whereby officials in, eg, benefits or health or education (and, eg, landlords and employers) were to assume that any apparent or admitted non-native was in the UK illegally unless the individual could prove otherwise by producing documentation which conformed to a particular, limited, list. Legal presence might be proved by proof of arrival prior to 1971, but such records were, now irretrievable.
As I said, this is mere speculation. As ever, I would welcome correction by the better-informed.