Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department had any involvement in the drafting of the Ministerial Direction dated 5 August 2011 under section 9 of the National Heritage Act 1980 vetting the Mountbatten Archive in the University of Southampton.

As the hon. Member will be aware, there are several FOI exemptions that remain in place for historic records. As I said in previous answers, this case is currently before the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) and it would not be appropriate to make further comment whilst this is subject to ongoing legal proceedings.