Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-86)
SARAH TYACKE
CB, MRS W JONES
AND SUSAN
HEALY
14 SEPTEMBER 2004
Q80 Peter Bottomley: Last year you had
a consultation on the possible advantages and scope of new legislation
covering you.
Mrs Tyacke: Yes.
Q81 Peter Bottomley: Not just dealing
with footnote 8 at page 23, where I noticed you did not have the
power to define what a public record is, which seemed a gap in
itself. Can you tell us what the benefits of the legislation are
likely to be?
Mrs Tyacke: I touched, I think,
upon the issue of The National Archives itself and I do not wish
to go over that again if that is all right? The public consultation
was positive in this respect, that there does seem to be a need
for there to be a proper framework to underpin the records management
and archival element of the raft of information legislation that
is coming through. Obviously there are elements already in existence,
and I would not wish to over rate the necessity to do this but
it did seem to us that we should go out to the public with the
public consultation document about various duties which would
make it easier for departments and other public sector bodies
to comply because they would have a proper framework over and
above that of the Public Records Act. The first duty that we asked
people to give us a view on was whether there should be a duty
to create records and we had a positive response to that. The
second, should there be a framework for monitoring and for taking
steps to make sure that this framework is in place, there are
elements obviously already there but there is not a proper framework
to do that. There are bodies out there who could perhaps undertake
some of that type of work. We are looking basically to get records
management embedded, if you like, into the public sector as well
as, of course, central Government. At the moment everything is
administrative but we have moved very sharply into compliance
regimes and if you have compliance regimes you need to be able
to show that you have ways of meeting those compliance regimes
which have, in our view, a need for some legislative underpinning
and then, of course, the critical issue which is very critical
is to have a way of dealing with the digital record beyond the
administrative ways that I have outlined already. We have to be
sure that what we may be doing practically does in fact mean that
a digital record when it goes to court is in fact a record which
is reliable and authentic for evidential reasons otherwise while
I can tell you that the Domesday Book is the Domesday
Book it may be not too easy to convince you that something
that came through last week is what it purports to be. I think
there should be some legislation on that particular issue, not
in the sense of saying you have to use this, that or the other,
that would be silly, but in terms of making it clear what the
record is that we are talking about.
Q82 Peter Bottomley: Do you know how
many clauses a possible Bill might have?
Mrs Tyacke: As many as are necessary
or, I should say, as few as are necessary. I am sure a short Bill
would be sensible.
Q83 Peter Bottomley: Do you know if the
Department has authorised the drafting of the Bill yet?
Mrs Tyacke: Remember that this
was a public consultation document and we have put various proposals
to Ministers. These are being discussed now and obviously the
legislative programme is for others to determine.
Q84 Ross Cranston: Have other comparable
jurisdictions updated their legislation so that there is a model?
Mrs Tyacke: Yes.
Q85 Ross Cranston: Such as?
Mrs Tyacke: Australia in particular
but the Netherlands has quite a recent Act if I recollect correctly.
Ross Cranston: You have set your stall
out very well and I think we are very sympathetic to you on that
one.
Q86 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
We are most grateful for your help. I wonder if I could draw attention
before I close this meeting that the House has been asked to observe
a minute's silence at 11 o'clock as a mark of sympathy for the
tragic events in Beslan which will be in nine minutes' time. Thank
you very much indeed for your help this morning.
Mrs Tyacke: Thank you very much
for inviting us.
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