Mark Durkan
Main Page: Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)Department Debates - View all Mark Durkan's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Murrison
The hon. Gentleman makes his points in his usual robust fashion. It is clearly important that justice is done in Northern Ireland as it is throughout the United Kingdom, and that when there are failings they are properly investigated.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
4. What steps she is taking to safeguard records relevant to the work of the Historical Investigations Unit, the Independent Commission for Information Retrieval, inquests, and other inquiries into the past.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
The Northern Ireland Office takes responsibility for safeguarding its records very seriously and will continue to follow existing protocols.
Mark Durkan
The Secretary of State gave the commitments on behalf of the British Government in the Stormont House agreement to ensure that whenever the new mechanisms come into place all records will be given to them. What steps is she taking to make sure that all current records will still be available? She knows that there have been many cases where files or their contents have disappeared, to the dissatisfaction of those dealing with them. What steps is she taking to safeguard against that?
Mrs Villiers
The Northern Ireland Office undertook a review of record keeping in the wake of the problems that occurred in relation to the cases involving the RPM—royal prerogative of mercy. We are satisfied that all necessary measures are in place to ensure that records will be available for transfer as appropriate, but we will also take steps to make sure that sensitive material is protected from onward disclosure by the institutions concerned.