Historical Manuscripts Commission

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Tuesday 29th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those expressed for the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for introducing this debate. I join him in suggesting that the memory of the late Lord Bingham should be invoked in our discussions. I met Lord Bingham once on another matter, but at the end of that conversation we spoke a little about archives and it was noticeable how he suddenly became incredibly animated—not that the earlier discussion was not interesting, but it seemed to me that archives were his passion and interest at that time.

I declare an interest as a trustee of a recently formed trust that holds an archive of personal and political papers that will be a mixture of both private papers and papers of relevance to the nation.

The key issue appears to be whether the merger of the Historical Manuscripts Commission into the National Archives will allow the specificity that is necessary for those classes of manuscripts to be retained. It is important that we recognise, as many noble Lords have said, that there has now been some change in the previous arrangements in that there is now more visibility. We shall see whether that is sufficient, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, put it; whether the commission can now have the sort of resources or the focus that it used to have—albeit accepting the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, that within TNA the whole resource is greater than it would have been had it been independent; and whether there will be more expertise and possibly more modern approaches to the work that it is doing.

I have two very small points. We want to hear from the Minister whether the undertakings that were obtained by my noble friend Lord Wills towards the end of his time as Minister, when he was trying to resolve the issue, are being taken forward. Some clarity on that would be useful. The noble Lord suggested that the target for the level of activity in the merged institution should be at least as high as it was prior to the merger. That would be a test that we could usefully use to judge whether it has been successful.

I will make two small points. The noble Lords, Lord Rodgers, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Bew, mentioned the ability of ministerial papers to influence official histories, and the need for the Government to commit to maintaining a programme of publishing them. I would certainly welcome this, because the papers are important.

Manuscripts and archives, as we discussed, suggest vellum and an earlier age in which artefacts were stored—as we can see close by in the rolls that look so impressive. However, we should consider the electronic age. The archive with which I am involved has the majority of its records in electronic format. It has proved very difficult to obtain a consistent picture of issues that one wants to look at in the archive because at least 50% of the material is still on paper and the balance is electronic.

There has been no merging of diary records with paper and other records, and it is therefore very hard, because of these mixed modes, to get a picture of events and activities that happened. When one adds to that the fact that government is increasingly involved in leading debate and activity by putting forward things on the web—whether in social media or formally through websites—one can see the difficulty that we face. It is important for the Government to have a view on this, and it would be helpful if the Minister could respond to a few of the points.