The real scandal is that government files are ‘lost’ all the time

Like almost everyone else, I have no idea whether the accusations about paedophilia in Parliament in the 1980s are true. One thing I do feel quite confident about, though, is the business of the lost ‘dossiers’. The suggestion is that the disappearance of the file containing Geoffrey Dickens’s accusations of about 30 years ago and of 114 other files proves a cover-up. It does not. Literally tens of thousands of government files are destroyed every year, without much inspection. I believe, for example, that the overwhelming majority of the files from the offices of Chief Whip, the Leader of the House and Lord President of the Council from the 1980s were thrown out. And it is commonplace for departments to destroy files from the private offices of ministers. Such obliteration is, perhaps, a form of cover-up, but not a selective one. The prejudice is in favour of chucking out things which might be interesting (and therefore embarrassing), but this is done not by weeding out individual stories: it means that everything gets thrown away unless specifically saved.