Wanless Review

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am unable at this stage to shed any further light on that, but obviously that will be looked into. If there is evidence sitting somewhere like that, we want to ensure that it is available to the inquiry.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary remains so hungry to find the truth about this situation. I am a little puzzled, because the period of the review stretches from 1979 to 1999 yet there is such a heavy dependence on paper-based records, even though the use of computing within public administration would have been widespread for a good deal of that period. Why is that the case?

[Mrs May]

I am afraid that Governments spend a lot of time working with paper-based methods. Indeed, much of the material available to Government is still paper-based, rather than in digital form. Obviously, increasingly the balance is changing, but the records kept at that time were almost invariably in paper form. Indeed, many records are still kept in paper form.