THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000

MR MARTIN BROUGHTON, MR PETER WILSON, MR GARETH DAVIS, MR DAVID DAVIES AND DR AXEL GIETZ

  940. Did you look at other archive arrangements when you put the access issue together, when you arranged for people to go into that particular room and the opening hours and access arrangements? Had you actually looked at, for example, nearby local authority archives where people might be researching family history or looking at records of property? Did you study existing models of archives?
  (Mr Broughton) I have absolutely no idea.

  941. I appreciate you have other things on your mind; I understand that. You are not an archive organisation but you appreciate from our point of view this is a fairly important area of inquiry.
  (Mr Broughton) Yes, I understand your concerns on this one. What I would say at this stage is that the demands we have had have been met. I am sure it could have been done in a different form. If we were to do it again today, to start all over again, it is very likely we would do it in a different form. It is one of those things—it was put together for a specific litigation reason. It was never designed to be a public access depository. That was a subsequent event that it turned into a public access. If we had designed it in the first place then we would probably have designed it differently, but that was not the way that the thing occurred. We decided to make it open to the public at the end of the Minnesota litigation, so these things have just progressed as to the way it just happened to be done at the time. If you were starting with a clean sheet of paper and saying, "I want to set up a depository to make it available to the public", you might well do it on a different basis, but that is just an accident of history.

  942. Is there a will within your company, if we were to make some reference in our recommendations to better access, to look at the recommendations and respond positively to some suggestions that we might have?
  (Mr Broughton) If I was convinced that it was going to be worth the effort. You must remember that this has been open now for quite a long time to the litigants. It only became open to the public in 1999 but it was open to the litigants before that. Of the eight million pieces of paper in there, something like 350,000 have been selected by one or other of the litigants in Minnesota or elsewhere. All of that is available to be put on the Internet in the sense that if whoever took it wants it on the Internet, most of it is on the Internet. Frankly, the other seven and three-quarter million pieces of paper I think would be an extreme effort for absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Nobody has shown any interest in it despite all the people who have been there. It seems to me to be a strange area for you to get so concerned about.

  943. We are interested in it particularly because when we were in America some of the people we met were extremely interested in learning more about what was in those files and were concerned that they could not be accessed.
  (Mr Broughton) They can be accessed.

  944. With respect, we were able to short-circuit the system and go out of hours. If I was a researcher for an organisation it would be June, July, before I was able to get access. You have limited access. The process of getting through those documents is cumbersome. Any archivist, looking at the way things are arranged at the present time, would be able to streamline it quite radically and make it more possible for people to access it rapidly.
  (Mr Broughton) Maybe they could, but if you had people saying to you, as you are suggesting, that it is not available, why did they not apply to come last year?

  Chairman: I suspect they have done but we can come back to that.

  945. Gentlemen, I think we are all clear why we are having this dialogue and there are just two things I want to get clear in my mind. I want to put the two questions to each of you if you would give me a quick reply. The first question is, as representatives of your five companies are you broadly familiar with the overall tone, contents, of the documents that you have in store? Broadly familiar with the tone of the documents that you have in store?
  (Dr Gietz) If you emphasise three times the adverb "broadly",—

  946. You are broadly familiar with these documents?
  (Dr Gietz) Yes, but it may well happen that you are going to quote a document to me that I do not know.

  947. Mr Gareth Davis, are you broadly familiar?
  (Mr Davis) No, to be frank, I could not say I am.

  948. You are not broadly familiar at all?
  (Mr Davis) No.

  949. Mr Wilson?
  (Mr Wilson) I think we have something like 3.2 million pieces of paper and there is no way that I have read some of them.

  950. You are not broadly familiar?
  (Mr Wilson) No.

  951. Mr Broughton? Broadly familiar?
  (Mr Broughton) I am honestly not sure that I know whether to answer the question yes or no, the way the question was phrased, but I think I could easily answer that both yes and no. In the very broadest sense, yes, in some areas I would be able to go into more detail than that, but in other areas I would not have the slightest idea what was in there.

  952. Mr David Davies, are you broadly familiar?
  (Mr Davies) I am familiar with some of the documents. There are documents on the Internet which are mine. I am obviously familiar with those, but I cannot say that I am broadly familiar with all the millions of pages which go back to the fifties.

  953. My second and final question, if you would each answer, is this. Given, as I said, that we are all aware why we are having this dialogue, would you tell me one by one, do you think that among these records there would be some information which might be of use to a potential litigant?
  (Dr Gietz) A question in the subjunctive.

  954. Broadly.
  (Dr Gietz) No, there is no way I can answer that.

  955. You are not sure if there is anything that might be of use to a potential litigant?
  (Dr Gietz) I honestly do not know.

  956. You are not sure?
  (Dr Gietz) I think that, as Mr Broughton has—

  957. So there may or may not be?
  (Dr Gietz) There may or may not be.

  958. Right. Mr Gareth Davies? Do you think there might be anything that could be of use to a potential litigant? I just wanted to establish whether we are wasting our time, because we were there yesterday with all these documents and I started to go through them. I would be dead by the time I read them all so are we all wasting our time? Mr Gareth Davis, do you think there might be anything?
  (Mr Davis) I will reference you to your first questions—

  959. You just do not know?
  (Mr Davis) Because I am not broadly familiar—