ONLY A FEW MPs stayed to discuss the Public Records
Bill last Friday, and much of their time was spent on tedious semantics: what constitutes `reasonable facilities'; what distinguishes 'facili- ties' from 'accommodation': and whae is the differ- ence between a 'record,' a 'document' and a `paper.' As a result the House 'hardly -came to grips with the most interesting problem confront- ing it : how to enable researchers to examine State Papers of recent date. Mr. Emrys Hughes moved that they should become available for inspection after forty (instead of, as proposed, fifty) years: and Mr. R. T. Paget pointed ont that the fifty-year rule makes ludicrous the position of an author Working, as he has been, on Lora Kitchener; his Progress is' stopped abruptly at 1908. But nobody made-the point that a politician or military leader, if sufficiently eminent, can use material which is denied to genuine researchers; and, proVided he is sufficiently eminent, he can get away with it. Substituting forty for fifty years is the wrong way, I should have thought, to go about it : what is needed is the introduction of machinery which Will allow all bona fide researchers to work on recent State documents, while retaining whatever safeguards are considered necessary to prevent abuse of the privilege. * *
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