Andrew Lownie’s books include biographies of John Buchan, Guy Burgess and The Mountbattens and Traitor King.
“This acquisition is of immense national and historical importance…It is impossible to underestimate the Archives’ historical and national impact; in particular, without them we would find it difficult to understand fully the foundations of the independent states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh” claimed the National Heritage Memorial Fund’s Chief Executive, as part of the fundraising efforts in 2010 to purchase the private diaries and letters of Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten, the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India.
The efforts were successful, with the collection being secured for Southampton University’s Hartley Library with the help of £2.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, contributions from Hampshire County Council and £1.6 million of tax waived by HMRC under the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme.
The diaries and letters had been widely quoted in the official biographies of Dickie by Philip Ziegler and of Edwina by Janet Morgan, and several authors had consulted them for their books. I was therefore surprised when in 2015 I began researching my book The Mountbattens that Southampton claimed to know nothing about them.
After a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, few of which were answered within the statutory required period, Southampton stated that under the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) arrangements with HMRC, it had acquired ownership of the Mountbatten Archive under a ‘Ministerial Direction’, with an obligation to “make it accessible to the public”.
However, there was a proviso for “elements” which the Cabinet Office had notified Southampton were “closed”. The diaries and letters were such ‘elements’, Southampton asserted – adding that this was a statutory ban on disclosure, that it would be unlawful to breach it, and that it was therefore exempted, under section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), from complying with requests for access to any information contained in the diaries or letters.
The genesis of this seemingly unique Ministerial Direction remains mysterious, since neither the University nor the Cabinet Office will even identify the signatory. Indeed, under FOI requests, no government department has accepted any responsibility for it.
Over the next few years, I was repeatedly forced to call on the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to force the Cabinet Office and Southampton to respond properly to my requests.
In 2019, the Information Commissioner instituted and served contempt proceedings against the University in the High Court – a step unprecedented against a public authority.
Eight months later, it issued a Decision Notice, ruling that the diaries and letters should be released, a decision which the Cabinet Office and Southampton appealed.
By the time of the four-day hearing in November 2021, the appeal had become academic, because Southampton had released 99 per cent of the diaries and letters – over 30,000 pages. In that respect, I had achieved my aim. The material that they had kept closed for a decade and fought so hard to prevent being made publicly available proved to be entirely innocuous.
Until just before the four-day hearing in November 2021, Southampton had argued they were bound by the Ministerial Direction controlling the letters and diaries. But they then dropped this argument, saying that specific FOIA exemptions would be applied. On such grounds, the Cabinet Office had no role to play in the hearing, no right to “review” anything or to dictate to Southampton what to do with FOIA, but this was ignored by the tribunal.
Furthermore, there was no evidence that the diaries and letters had ever been “closed” – neither the Cabinet Office nor Southampton could cite a specific notice but tried to argue that, by implication, they had been caught by the “undertakings” concerning Dickie’s official papers in agreements in the 1960s and 1980s.
But this could not be. The diaries and letters are expressly defined as AIL Chattels in the 2011 Purchase Agreement – not Excluded Records – i.e the papers that the Cabinet Office had closed. The 2011 agreement expressly stated that the vendors were free to sell all AIL Chattels and that they are not subject to the Undertakings. Thus, the proviso in the Ministerial Direction couldn’t apply in any event to AIL Chattels. All this was, again, ignored by the tribunal.
Even though I had succeeded in securing the release of 99 per cent of the material, my application for costs was dismissed leaving me with a legal bill of £460,000, only £60,000 of which had been raised from a Crowdjustice page (though I have been given permission to appeal on costs to the Upper Tribunal).
I still owe my lawyers just under £40,000. No private individual should be financially ruined by seeking access to material which was purchased with taxpayers’ money on the basis that it would be open to the public. But that is the position I now find myself in.
Millions of pounds of public monies were spent purchasing the total Broadlands Archive (even though we don’t know exactly what was apportioned to the diaries and letters), to make this important collection available to the public. And then, given that Southampton and the Cabinet Office deployed two top QCs and a plethora of lawyers, well over £1 million has been spent suppressing them.
However, neither Southampton nor the Cabinet Office will say, even after questions in Parliament, how much public money has been spent on pursuing their needless appeal. This is something on which both the Cabinet Office and Southampton should be pressed. I also feel that I’m entitled to my legal costs being reimbursed, given this unreasonable behaviour, and that I succeeded in securing the release of the material.
One has to ask why an academic institution, presumably in favour of scholarship being made available and in academic freedom, is censoring private diaries and letters ostensibly on behalf of the Government, for which there is no legal justification, in what seems an unquestioning relationship between an academic institution and the State.
And many questions remain. Why are the Cabinet Office paying most of Southampton’s costs? Why hasn’t the option to release the Nehru-Edwina Mountbatten correspondence, bought under the same agreement, been exercised – as it could have been at any time for £100 since 2016?
Julian Lewis has been stalwart in raising the matter in Parliament with two Early Day Motions (see here and here), and the story has received widespread press coverage, but more needs to be done. The relevant Commons or Lords Select Committee needs to bring the relevant Secretary of State before it, plus Southampton’s Vice-Chancellor, to probe this scandal. The new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Oliver Dowden, the author of this article, should be lobbied.
The Government claim that they support transparency and integrity but that has not been my experience. The campaign has come at a heavy personal cost, but I hope that as a result of my efforts an important historical source has been made available and that a stand has been made for academic freedom, access to archives, the need for trust and transparency in public institutions – and against the abuse of power.
Andrew Lownie’s Crowdjustice page can be found here.
Andrew Lownie’s books include biographies of John Buchan, Guy Burgess and The Mountbattens and Traitor King.
“This acquisition is of immense national and historical importance…It is impossible to underestimate the Archives’ historical and national impact; in particular, without them we would find it difficult to understand fully the foundations of the independent states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh” claimed the National Heritage Memorial Fund’s Chief Executive, as part of the fundraising efforts in 2010 to purchase the private diaries and letters of Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten, the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India.
The efforts were successful, with the collection being secured for Southampton University’s Hartley Library with the help of £2.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, contributions from Hampshire County Council and £1.6 million of tax waived by HMRC under the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme.
The diaries and letters had been widely quoted in the official biographies of Dickie by Philip Ziegler and of Edwina by Janet Morgan, and several authors had consulted them for their books. I was therefore surprised when in 2015 I began researching my book The Mountbattens that Southampton claimed to know nothing about them.
After a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, few of which were answered within the statutory required period, Southampton stated that under the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) arrangements with HMRC, it had acquired ownership of the Mountbatten Archive under a ‘Ministerial Direction’, with an obligation to “make it accessible to the public”.
However, there was a proviso for “elements” which the Cabinet Office had notified Southampton were “closed”. The diaries and letters were such ‘elements’, Southampton asserted – adding that this was a statutory ban on disclosure, that it would be unlawful to breach it, and that it was therefore exempted, under section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), from complying with requests for access to any information contained in the diaries or letters.
The genesis of this seemingly unique Ministerial Direction remains mysterious, since neither the University nor the Cabinet Office will even identify the signatory. Indeed, under FOI requests, no government department has accepted any responsibility for it.
Over the next few years, I was repeatedly forced to call on the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to force the Cabinet Office and Southampton to respond properly to my requests.
In 2019, the Information Commissioner instituted and served contempt proceedings against the University in the High Court – a step unprecedented against a public authority.
Eight months later, it issued a Decision Notice, ruling that the diaries and letters should be released, a decision which the Cabinet Office and Southampton appealed.
By the time of the four-day hearing in November 2021, the appeal had become academic, because Southampton had released 99 per cent of the diaries and letters – over 30,000 pages. In that respect, I had achieved my aim. The material that they had kept closed for a decade and fought so hard to prevent being made publicly available proved to be entirely innocuous.
Until just before the four-day hearing in November 2021, Southampton had argued they were bound by the Ministerial Direction controlling the letters and diaries. But they then dropped this argument, saying that specific FOIA exemptions would be applied. On such grounds, the Cabinet Office had no role to play in the hearing, no right to “review” anything or to dictate to Southampton what to do with FOIA, but this was ignored by the tribunal.
Furthermore, there was no evidence that the diaries and letters had ever been “closed” – neither the Cabinet Office nor Southampton could cite a specific notice but tried to argue that, by implication, they had been caught by the “undertakings” concerning Dickie’s official papers in agreements in the 1960s and 1980s.
But this could not be. The diaries and letters are expressly defined as AIL Chattels in the 2011 Purchase Agreement – not Excluded Records – i.e the papers that the Cabinet Office had closed. The 2011 agreement expressly stated that the vendors were free to sell all AIL Chattels and that they are not subject to the Undertakings. Thus, the proviso in the Ministerial Direction couldn’t apply in any event to AIL Chattels. All this was, again, ignored by the tribunal.
Even though I had succeeded in securing the release of 99 per cent of the material, my application for costs was dismissed leaving me with a legal bill of £460,000, only £60,000 of which had been raised from a Crowdjustice page (though I have been given permission to appeal on costs to the Upper Tribunal).
I still owe my lawyers just under £40,000. No private individual should be financially ruined by seeking access to material which was purchased with taxpayers’ money on the basis that it would be open to the public. But that is the position I now find myself in.
Millions of pounds of public monies were spent purchasing the total Broadlands Archive (even though we don’t know exactly what was apportioned to the diaries and letters), to make this important collection available to the public. And then, given that Southampton and the Cabinet Office deployed two top QCs and a plethora of lawyers, well over £1 million has been spent suppressing them.
However, neither Southampton nor the Cabinet Office will say, even after questions in Parliament, how much public money has been spent on pursuing their needless appeal. This is something on which both the Cabinet Office and Southampton should be pressed. I also feel that I’m entitled to my legal costs being reimbursed, given this unreasonable behaviour, and that I succeeded in securing the release of the material.
One has to ask why an academic institution, presumably in favour of scholarship being made available and in academic freedom, is censoring private diaries and letters ostensibly on behalf of the Government, for which there is no legal justification, in what seems an unquestioning relationship between an academic institution and the State.
And many questions remain. Why are the Cabinet Office paying most of Southampton’s costs? Why hasn’t the option to release the Nehru-Edwina Mountbatten correspondence, bought under the same agreement, been exercised – as it could have been at any time for £100 since 2016?
Julian Lewis has been stalwart in raising the matter in Parliament with two Early Day Motions (see here and here), and the story has received widespread press coverage, but more needs to be done. The relevant Commons or Lords Select Committee needs to bring the relevant Secretary of State before it, plus Southampton’s Vice-Chancellor, to probe this scandal. The new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Oliver Dowden, the author of this article, should be lobbied.
The Government claim that they support transparency and integrity but that has not been my experience. The campaign has come at a heavy personal cost, but I hope that as a result of my efforts an important historical source has been made available and that a stand has been made for academic freedom, access to archives, the need for trust and transparency in public institutions – and against the abuse of power.
Andrew Lownie’s Crowdjustice page can be found here.