Thirty year rule

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The "thirty year rule" is the popular name given to a law in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Australia that states that the yearly cabinet papers of a government will be released publicly thirty years after they were created.

1 United Kingdom
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the Public Records Act 1958, amended in 1967, states that "Public records ....other than those to which members of the public have had access before their transfer ...., shall not be available for public inspection until they have been in existence for [thirty] years or such other period....as the Lord Chancellor may,.... for the time being prescribe as respects any particular class of public records." The rule was essentially two 30 year rules; one requiring that records be transferred from government departments to the Public Record Office (now The National Archives) at 30 years unless specific exemptions were given (by the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Council on Public Records), and that they were opened at such time unless they were deemed likely to cause "damage to the country's image, national security or foreign relations" if they were to be released.

A good example of this was when the British cabinet papers for 1973 were released - the papers covering September 11 were barred from release as that was the day of the coup by Augusto Pinochet against Chilean President Salvador Allende.^{[citation needed]}

This rule was changed by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (which came into force Jan 1st 2005). The FOI act essentially removed the 2nd of the 30 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 removing some of the exemptions which had previously applied at the 30 year point. After 30 years, information is transferred to The National Archives, and is reviewed under the FOI act to see if it should be opened. The only rationale for keeping it closed within The National Archives is if an FOI exemption applies.

As a result of this change, releases now happen monthly, rather than annually, and include more recent events, rather than only those over 30 years old.