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Researchers fear that thousands of government documents about the late queen and Prince Philip due for release in the next two years could be censored.
The files are scheduled to be made public in 2026 and 2027, five years after the royal couple’s deaths, and internal discussions have begun in Whitehall about how to process them and what should remain secret.
The papers are likely to include records of the highs and lows of Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign, correspondence between the royal household and government departments, and accounts of royal overseas tours, births, marriages, deaths, divorces and other momentous events in the second Elizabethan age.
Most public records considered to be of historical significance are released after 20 years, but there are numerous exemptions for government papers, including for national security reasons, disclosures that might affect international relations, and those involving members of the royal family. Separately, the royal family’s own archives at Windsor are not deemed public records, nor covered by the Freedom of Information Act.
Papers involving communications with the monarch are kept secret until five years after their death.
Members of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, the statutory body that advises government departments on disclosure of public records, will ask for a briefing from civil servants on how the large number of files now likely to be disclosed will be dealt with, amid concerns about an already substantial backlog of disputed cases involving the royal family.
This weekend, Dr Bendor Grosvenor, an art historian who resigned from the council in 2018 in protest at the government’s refusal to publish papers on the Profumo scandal, called for a radical overhaul of the way records are treated when an application is made to prevent their release. Grosvenor said it was often junior civil servants, not permanent secretaries and other senior officials, who made the decisions. He said they could be more risk-averse, and chose vague and dubious reasons to retain files in their department.
“The Cabinet Office are the knee-jerk ones who react all the time,” Grosvenor said. “The system does need to be changed, because the advisory council has on it people who really know what they are talking about and they should be trusted.”
The advisory council should be involved if a government department asks to retain files instead of handing them over to the National Archives and when a Freedom of Information Act request is made to disclose documents. But Grosvenor said members of the council are often unable to see the documents in detail and make an informed decision. He and other critics have singled out the Cabinet Office, which has a particularly close working relationship with the royal household, as the main bottleneck.
Last year, the council, which is chaired by the Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos and includes academics and former intelligence officials among its members, wrote to the culture secretary, copying in the Cabinet Office and the royal household, in an effort to remind civil servants of the guidelines in assessing whether royal files should be released. The aim of the letter was to seek a more uniform and transparent approach in Whitehall following frustrations that documents mentioning members of the royal family are often kept secret for spurious reasons and held in limbo for years.
Five years after the deaths of Philip and Elizabeth II, staff at the National Archives will also have to reassess previously closed royal files in its collection, but critics say it is often too keen to keep royal documents secret.
Dr Alison McClean, a researcher at the Centre for Academic Language and Development at the University of Bristol, said: “There seems to be an increasing reluctance to release any historical public records relating to members of the royal family and a worrying trend of withdrawing access from records that have previously been released.
“During the past few years, the National Archives has re-closed or redacted a number of royal records, including cabinet papers relating to the 1953Regency Act 1953 and prime ministerial records concerning the investiture of the Prince of Wales.”
A spokesperson for the National Archives said: “Under the Public Records Act 1958, those responsible for public records must make arrangements for the selection of those records which ought to be permanently preserved and so any government department or public body planning on releasing documents related to the late queen should follow the selection and transfer guidance.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “All records are released in line with the Public Records Act.”
