Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the statement by the Minister of State for NHS Delivery in HL Deb, 19 April 2006, column 1054, how many papers were destroyed in error; and what proportion of the relevant documents from 1973 were available to inform the report on self-sufficiency.

Over 4,000 documents on blood safety that were available for the period 1970-85 and informed the self-sufficiency report, were published on the Department’s website in 2007. Over 550 further, from the same period, were published in 2009.

Regrettably, some advisory committee papers from the period 1989 and 1992 were inadvertently destroyed some years ago. Many earlier papers that were recalled from departmental files for HIV litigation purposes in the early 1990s were also inadvertently destroyed, but copies later recovered from the firm of solicitors acting for the claimants have been published electronically via the Department’s website.

It is not possible therefore to say with certainty the proportion of all the earlier documents that were available to inform the 2007 self sufficiency report.

All available documents including those from 1986 to 1995 are now available through the National Archive.