Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are the titles and authors of works commissioned under the Official History Programme but not yet published; when these titles were commissioned; and when they are due to be published.

There are currently no Civil Servants allocated to the Official Histories Programme.

Works commissioned under the Official History Programme but not yet published are the fifth and final volume of the Official History of the Criminal Justice System and the second and final volume of the Official History of the Joint Intelligence Organisation.

It would not be possible to answer when titles were commissioned without disproportionate effort. However, this would have been well in excess of 10 years ago. We do not have any further prospective publishing dates at this time.

The Histories, Openness and Records Unit (HORU) was absorbed into the Knowledge and Information Management Unit (KIMU) in 2008. This is now known as the Cabinet Office Public Records and Archives (COPRA) Unit. The last Head of the Official History Programme retired from the Cabinet Office over 7 years ago.

The Government did not publish a response to the 2009 review of the Official History Programme led by Sir Joseph Pilling.