Sri Harmandir Sahib

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

It is important to explain the investigation, and that is what I am doing today. I am sure that my hon. Friend will encourage his constituents to read the report. It is not a report just for Parliament to read; it is a report for the public to read. It is published on the Government’s website and it is easy for Members of Parliament to make copies available. People will be able to make judgments for themselves on its transparency and on how much reassurance to take from it. I hope they will be reassured that in this country we do look into such documents and respond to demands for investigations. We asked the highest ranking civil servant in the country to lead those investigations. We ensured that officials from 30 years ago were interviewed and that tens of thousands of documents were examined. There are not many countries in the world that have that level of transparency relating to events in the past, let alone in the present. We should say that those are good attributes of our country, and that they are good examples of how we face up to issues from the past.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

May I take the Foreign Secretary back to the answer he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson)? On page 2 of his report, he rather glibly says that under a 25-year procedure a lot of Ministry of Defence files were destroyed. This issue is not new and concerns have been expressed ever since 1984. Therefore, what was going through the minds of people in the MOD when they destroyed those files? Only some of them have been discovered in parallel files kept in other Departments. Why, at no stage in 1984, did any Minister feel fit to tell the House of Commons that a British military adviser had been sent to India? I was a Member of the House at that time and no such reference was ever made, so it was unlikely that any question would have been raised.

[Mr Hague]

It is hard to judge—1984 was a few years before I was a Member of this House—why questions were not asked and statements not given. I do not think that we can go back and judge that now. The hon. Gentleman said that I had said glibly in the report that the file was destroyed, but it is the Cabinet Secretary’s report, not my report. The Cabinet Secretary is reporting the fact, which is that the MOD destroyed that file in 2009. It is not for me to explain that. That happened under the previous Administration and was carried out by an official; it was not a political or ministerial decision. It raises a sufficient question such that, in the review I announced today, we have to look at such rules and how these things are carried out. That is part of what Sir Alex Allan will examine.