Dear all

I thought it would be helpful to clarify the situation here.

ADVICE TO PARLIAMENTARIANS

As part of it services, the Parliamentary Archives offers impartial advice to members of both Houses about which archives would be a suitable home in which to deposit their papers.  We would normally advise either:
a) The relevant county record office for the constituency (for MPs)
b) One of the archives which has particularly strong party or political holdings: probably one of those listed here http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/pppag-repositories.htm (excluding ourselves)
c) The archive of a university where the member studied/worked or with which s/he has a local connection (for members of the Lords), if applicable.
We currently publicise this service in a variety of ways, and will be leafleting all members in both Houses on their return from the general election to continue to raise awareness of the help available.

DATA PROTECTION AND MP'S CASEWORK

On a separate but related issue, because MPs are individual data controllers under the act, there are particular issues relating to the deposit of sensitive personal files with third-party archives.  The House of Commons has issued guidance for MPs relating to the data protection issues associated with constituency casework here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/advice_for_members_offices.pdf  (see section 6.4).  Obviously many political paper collections in archives across the country do contain sensitive casework correspondence which has to be closed or redacted under the DPA for very lengthy periods of time, where it relates to living individuals – possibly up to 100 years.  This can be a burden on archive services and needs to be taken into account when acquiring such collections.  In addition, the depositor (the MP) would need to ensure that each data subject was content for their data to be used in this way when passing it on.  The advice says that MPs should not normally be passing on such case files to archive services without considering these issues, and should be discussing it both with the data subjects and the relevant archive services before agreement on any transfer.

FOI AND POLITICIANS' PAPERS

A final issue with politicians’ papers in public collections is that of Parliamentary Privilege (s.34 of the Freedom of Information Act).  Some papers from Parliament among politicians’ collections may be privileged, and archives need to understand what this is and what their obligations are under the FOI Act in relation to this.  We are planning a seminar for colleagues in UK archives probably towards the end of the year on this aspect of politicians’ papers in public archives, which could also include some DPA considerations.  If you would be interested in being informed of this when we have more details, please let me know.

I hope this helps

Caroline

Caroline Shenton
Clerk of the Records
Parliamentary Archives

Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]

For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra