According to the Guardian newspaper documents that might reveal truths about Britain’s former hereditary head of state and her husband are at risk of being kept secret when the time for their release becomes due.
Thousands of documents related to Elizabeth Windsor and husband Philip are due for release in the next two years.
According to he newspaper discussion about which documents should be suppressed has already begun in Whitehall, the centre of British government. Documents that ought to be placed in the public domain include correspondence between the Windsor family members and government departments.
It is not surprising that some papers related to international relations are not always released after 25 years. But it is worrying that papers to do with the Windsor family, from which the country’s head of state is drawn, may also be withheld. This is likely to be because these documents might reveal facts that undermine the undemocratic monarchy that is revered by much of the country’s “establishment”.
The family’s own archives are not even considered by the British state to be public records, nor subject to the Freedom of Information Act. They may be kept from public scrutiny indefinitely.
Government papers to do with communication with the hereditary head of state are kept secret until five years after their death. In view of the many years that a hereditary head of state may live this is in itself an affront to democratic basics.
Civil servants recommend the National Council on National Records and Archives which documents should be released or suppressed.
According to the Guardian there is “a substantial backlog of disputed cases” concerning the Windsor family. And according to a former member of the Council quoted by the newspaper recommendations are often made by junior civil servants with dubious reasons for keeping papers secret.
The former Council member also blamed the Cabinet Office, which has a close relationship with the Windsors, as the main obstacle to disclosure.
Council members are often unable to see the full document before they make a decision on what should be disclosed.
The Guardian said that “documents mentioning members of the royal family are often kept secret for spurious reasons and held in limbo for years”.
The National Archives are also accused in the report of being keen to keep Windsor documents secret.
One researcher is quoted as saying that there was “an increasing reluctance” to keep Windsor documents from the people of Britain., and for withdrawing from the public domain documents that had been released.
She said that the documents withdrawn or redacted in the last few years included ones relation to the 1953 Regency Act and prime ministerial records on the 1969 investiture of the so called Prince of Wales.
In response to the Guardian report a government stated that the Public Records Act was complied with.