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The "thirty-year rule" is the informal name given to laws in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the Commonwealth of Australia that provide that certain government documents will be released publicly thirty years after they were created. Some other countries' national archives also adhere to a thirty-year rule for the release of government documents.


United Kingdom

In the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Nor ...
, the
Public Records Act 1958 The Public Records Act 1958 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom forming the main legislation governing public records in the United Kingdom. It established a cohesive regulatory framework for public records at the Public Record Off ...
stated that: The closure period was reduced from fifty to thirty years by an amending act of 1967, passed during
Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
's government. Among those who had repeatedly urged the scrapping of the fifty-year rule was the historian A. J. P. Taylor. There were two elements to the rule: the first required that records be transferred from government departments to the
Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was m ...
(now
The National Archives National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives. Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...
) after thirty years unless specific exemptions were given (by the
Lord Chancellor The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. Th ...
's Advisory Council on Public Records); the second that they would be opened to public access at the same time unless their release was deemed likely to cause "damage to the country's image, national security or foreign relations". Significant changes were made to the rules as a consequence of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in ...
(FOIA) (which came into full effect on 1 January 2005). FOIA essentially removed the second of the thirty-year rules (the access one), and replaced it with provisions allowing citizens to request a wide range of information before any time limit has expired; and also removed some of the exemptions which had previously applied at the thirty-year point. After thirty years, records are transferred to The National Archives, and are reviewed under FOIA to see if they should be opened. The only rationale for keeping them closed within The National Archives is if a FOIA exemption applies. As a result of that change, releases now occur monthly, rather than annually, and include more recent events, rather than only those over thirty years old. An independent inquiry chaired by
Paul Dacre Paul Michael Dacre (; born 14 November 1948) is an English journalist and the former long-serving editor of the British right-wing tabloid the ''Daily Mail''. He is also editor-in-chief of DMG Media, which publishes the ''Daily Mail'', ''The Ma ...
, editor of the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publis ...
'', recommended in January 2009 that the last restrictions on the release of information, such as Cabinet minutes, should be reduced to a fifteen-year embargo and phased in over a fifteen-year period.


Change to a twenty-year rule

Under the
Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (c. 25), or CRAG Act, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on UK constitutional law which affected the civil service and the ratification of treaties, and made other significant chan ...
, the UK government started moving towards a twenty-year rule. Files from 1983 were released in August 2013 rather than January 2014, as would previously have been the case, and files from 1984 were released in January 2014. There will continue to be two releases per year until 2022, when the National Archives will receive the files from 2001 and 2002, having caught up with the transition.


Australia

In Australia, the thirty-year rule applied to Commonwealth (federal) government records, except for Cabinet handbooks (closed for fifty years) and raw census records (closed for 99 years). Those periods were laid down in the ''Archives Act 1983''. In 2009, the Archives Act was amended to reduce the closed period from thirty to twenty years, with Cabinet notebooks reduced from fifty to thirty years. Census records remain closed for 99 years to protect the privacy of individuals. Cabinet papers for a full year are released on 1 January each year. To reduce the withholding period from 30 to 20 years, two years of cabinet papers, and three years of cabinet notebooks, have been released simultaneously from 2011 until 2020, when the new 20-year period will be reached.


Ireland

The
Government of Ireland The Government of Ireland ( ga, Rialtas na hÉireann) is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland. The Constitution of Ireland vests executive authority in a government which is headed by the , the head of government. The gover ...
declassifies files in a similar fashion according to the thirty-year rule. In recent years, files relating to the state’s role in the conflict in
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
known as The Troubles are declassified in late December of each year.


Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that Cabinet confidentiality is essential to good government. In the decision '' Babcock v AG Canada'' the court explained the reason as:canada.ca: "Confidences of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada (Cabinet confidences)"
2014-04-30
To preserve this rule of confidentiality, subsection 70(1) of the Privacy Act provides that the Act does not apply to confidences of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. Other notable cases that expand upon the doctrine of cabinet confidentiality include ''Canada (Minister of Environment) v. Canada (Information Commissioner), 2003 FCA 68'' and ''Quinn v. Canada (Prime Minister), 2011 FC 379''. As of 2013, after a time lag of 20 years Canadians can submit access-to-information requests for cabinet records through the Privy Council Office, but this comes at a cost of $5 per request and can take months to process. In May 2018, it was disclosed that the Supreme Court of Canada under Chief Justice
Beverley McLachlin Beverley Marian McLachlin (born September 7, 1943) is a Canadian jurist and author who served as the 17th chief justice of Canada from 2000 to 2017. She is the longest-serving chief justice in Canadian history and the first woman to hold the p ...
had placed a "50-year from the time they rule on a case" embargo on public access to files related to the deliberations of the judges.theglobeandmail.com: "Supreme Court of Canada to keep records of deliberations secret for at least 50 years"
14 May 2018
According to Archivist Michael Dufresne, it was not until 1940 and the advent of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
that Cabinet kept an agenda and minutes of its deliberations.Library and Archives Canada Blog: "The beginning of the Conclusions: documenting the exercise of power"
16 Feb 2018
From 1867 to 1940, a succession of six men served as Clerk of the Privy Council, and their duties included serving as the only institutional memory bank of the Government of Canada. The appointment in 1940 of Arnold Danforth Patrick Heeney as Clerk and as first Secretary to the Cabinet changed the format of memory bank from biological to scriptural. Heeney was surprised upon arrival by the informal ways in which important business was conducted: Order-in-Council PC 1940-1121 of March 25, 1940 ushered in a significant change in the documentation of government. The Order-in-Council read, in part: Heeney established procedures and for the first time recorded the minutes and conclusions of a cabinet body – the Cabinet War Committee. In 1942, the Statutory Orders and Regulations Division was set up under PC 7992, 4 September 1942. Also under PC 7992, a registry for maintaining orders and minutes of council, Treasury Board Minutes and other government orders was established."Archives Search"
2018-05-20
It was not until 1944 that the formal collection of "Cabinet Conclusions" was created. In the early 1980s, the PCO began a voluntary transfer of cabinet records, which had been declassified after a 30-year holding period, to the National Archives (which became
Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is ...
in 2004) where they became publicly available, under the label "Cabinet Conclusions".Library and Archives Canada: "Cabinet Conclusions"
2018-02-16
After an initial document dump that included records dated from 1937 to 1952, the PCO released the records on an annual basis. In 2008, two years after Prime Minister
Stephen Harper Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Harper is the first and only prime minister to come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, ...
was elected, the tradition of annual voluntary releases of Cabinet Conclusions stopped.canada.com: "Release of government documents backlogged"
2 Sep 2013
In September 2013 while the Harper government was in power, PCO spokesman Raymond Rivet told a news organisation that the office was "committed" to making government documents and information accessible but that "Processing these records requires a significant investment of resources. We will continue to process and release records as resources permit." In May 2017, it came to light that the Government of Canada was under no obligation to release documentary records after a number of years.
NDP NDP may stand for: Computing * Neighbor Discovery Protocol, an Internet protocol * Nortel Discovery Protocol, a layer two Internet protocol, also called SONMP * Nondeterministic programming, a type of computer language Government * National De ...
Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members ofte ...
(MP)
Murray Rankin Murray Rankin (born January 26, 1950) is a Canadian lawyer, politician and public law expert who serves as British Columbia's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. A member of the New Democratic Party, Rankin represents the rid ...
, a legal scholar, said at the time:cbc.ca: "Government accused of hoarding Canadian history in 'secret' archives"
25 May 2017
In June 2017, an agreement between the Supreme Court of Canada and
Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is ...
arranged for the transfer of case-files under a 50-year rule.


Israel

Israel adopted the British model of a thirty-year rule as the basis for reviewing and declassifying its foreign policy documents. Israeli declassification policy is based on the Archives law of 1955. The principle of the law is that all material is to be released after thirty years, subject to limitations based on damage to state security, foreign policy or personal privacy. In practice this means that declassification of documents are fixed at different periods based on type of material and date of production. The original law has been modified and updated a number of times. Following a 2010 update of the legislation, the office of the Prime Minister released as statement explaining that "the new regulations shorten the period after which non-security-related material may be viewed, from 30 to 15 years, while lengthening the confidentiality period of certain defense-related documents to 70 years in cases in which Israel's security conditions require it".


Germany

The
German Federal Archives , type = Archive , seal = , seal_size = , seal_caption = , seal_alt = , logo = Bundesarchiv-Logo.svg , logo_size = , logo_caption = , lo ...
generally makes its holdings available after 30 years. Exceptions are for personnel files, which are opened only 10 years after the death of the individual or 100 years after the person's birth if the date of death is unknown, and records dealing with taxation, credit, and banking, which are sealed for 60 years. Additionally, Federal Archives holdings originating with the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
and communist organizations of the former
German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **G ...
(East Germany) have been available for decades with almost no limitations. The Federal Archives has also worked to make East German government records available with a minimum of time limitation. In any event, since October 2020, 30 years have passed from the dissolution of the GDR.


See also

*
Classified information in the United Kingdom Classified information in the United Kingdom is a system used to protect information from intentional or inadvertent release to unauthorised readers. The system is organised by the Cabinet Office and is implemented throughout central and local gover ...
*
Freedom of Information Act 2000 The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in ...
*
Freedom of information in the United Kingdom Freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom is controlled by two Acts of the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments respectively, which both came into force on 1 January 2005. * Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the "2000 Act") * Fr ...
*
Freedom of information legislation Freedom of information laws allow access by the general public to data held by national governments and, where applicable, by state and local governments. The emergence of freedom of information legislation was a response to increasing dissatisfa ...
*
Sanitization (classified information) Sanitization is the process of removing sensitive information from a document or other message (or sometimes encrypting it), so that the document may be distributed to a broader audience. When the intent is secrecy protection, such as in dealing ...
*
The National Archives National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives. Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...


References

{{reflist


External links


30 Year Rule Review (UK)Fact sheet 10 – Access to records under the Archives Act
National Archives of Australia Disclosure Public records Government documents State archives Freedom of information in the United Kingdom The National Archives (United Kingdom) Freedom of information in Canada