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Lord Owen had sought his Private Office papers but had been informed they had been pulped on the basis of a "bizarre" ten year destruction rule.

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The House of Commons met to discuss Lord Owen's claim that the Department of Health failed to honour his mid 1970s pledge to Parliament to make the UK self-sufficient in plasma products. Lord Owen was recorded to be concerned that his Private Office Papers were destroyed.

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Zubeda Seedat forwarded a parliamentary question from Lord Clement Jones to Charles Lister, asking what review had been undertaken into the circumstances of Lord Owen's missing files. In response, Charles Lister told Zubeda Seedat that the self-sufficiency report would not cover this issue.

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Robert Finch stated in his evidence to the Inquiry that he understood the papers kept by the private office were typically shredded or handed back to the relevant policy section and were never retained after a change of Government.

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Michael Lillywhite, then Principal Private Secretary to Dr David Owen during his time as Minister of Health, recalled that the procedure was that if there was a change of government then the papers would have been sent back to the relevant policy team.

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Robert Finch emailed Vicki King and Richard Gutowski after they briefed Melanie Johnson as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Public Health, with the following recorded "Lord Owen: Not a priority".

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In a letter to Rt Hon John Reid regarding the decision to make compensation available to people with haemophilia who contracted HIV through infected blood products, David Owen referred to the internal investigation regarding ministerial papers going missing.

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In an internal Department of Health email chain, Robert Finch wrote to Zubeda Seedat and Jill Taylor requesting them to prepare a short note to PS(PH) regarding Lord Owen's allegations regarding destruction of papers and "how to take forward without it looking quite bad".

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Richard Gutowski prepared a memo to PS(PH) with a draft letter for approval in response to Lord Owen about the Hepatitis C payment scheme and the review of internal papers between 1973 and 1985.

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Zubeda Seedat confirmed in a memo to Caroline Flint that while it might be practice to send private office papers to the DRO, her understanding was that private office papers at that time were either destroyed or returned to the policy section after a change in Government.

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An internal Department of Health email chain questioned why the devolved administrations were not checked with when it was found that some files had been destroyed and why plasma sources were not taken from US prisoners.

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Caroline Flint in her evidence to the Inquiry said, in relation to retention/destruction of papers in ministerial private offices following change of government, that the "private office themselves would destroy them or they would be handed on to somewhere else to destroy them."

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Dr Ailsa Wight was advised that Laura Kennedy could not find the documents identified in relation to Dr Owen's, Minister of State for Health, commitment to self-sufficiency in December 1974.

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Richard Gutowski sent a fax to Mike Arthur with a summary of, and advice to avoid, an out of court settlement in the HIV/haemophilia litigation.

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The Department of Health submitted a memorandum for the BSE Inquiry on department practices relating to the retention of briefings for incoming ministers.

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The Chancellor of the Exchequer to Parliament presented the Committee on Departmental Records Report.

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The Department of Health published its report entitled "Self-Sufficiency in Blood Products in England and Wales: A Chronology from 1973 to 1991".

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In his written evidence to the Inquiry, Lord Norman Fowler recounted his own experience of the shortcomings in the Department of Health's system of handling private office papers, recording "it was quite evident that they didn't have a system [for storing papers]."

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In his oral evidence to the Inquiry, Lord Norman Fowler confirmed he knew nothing of any rule or policy regarding the maintenance or destruction of ministerial papers.

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Yvonne de Sampayo found some papers and provided them to Mark Gidden, who was covering for Anita James.

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