Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the Government procurement exercise reference TNA406, published on 11 November 2021, who has been responsible for deciding which of the collations of service records maintained by the National Archives should be selected as priorities for digitisation, licensing and publication.

The National Archives and the Ministry of Defence are in the first year of a 6-year project to transfer almost 10 million service personnel records to The National Archives. The National Archives has chosen to focus first on the transfer of records that cover Army ‘other ranks’ and overseas regiments. This approach is based on factors including the age-profile and physical presentation of these records. Over 99% of the records that will be transferred during year 1 will go forward for digitisation, licensing and publication.