Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Ashton of Hyde on 24 April (HL Deb, cols 600–602) on records held by the National Lottery Heritage Fund that the fund took legal advice and that even if it had retained the records, “it would not have been able to make them available”, what was the nature of the legal advice taken; and on what grounds it was argued that such records could not be made available.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund (the Fund) took advice from its professional legal advisors as to the legal status of the Conservation Management Plans, which included advice on copyright and on the implications to the Fund if they were to make the CMPs available to third parties. The advice concluded that if the Fund disclosed the Conservation Management Plans it would risk being in breach of copyright