Regarding the papers being held back for 100 years (or is it 50?), the obvious question is – what papers?
It must be remembered that Lord Philip had to resort to asking campaigners if they could provide the policy document setting out the standard of proof (‘absolutely no doubt whatsoever’), and that governing Safety Critical Software, as MoD claimed it could not.
At one point, MoD said the papers held by the ‘lead branch’ would be retained for 25 years. It would not say who the lead branch was.
The project office? It ceased to exist in March 1999, and if other aircraft offices in the same Directorate are anything to go by, 90% of their records had already vanished in the move to AbbeyWood in July 1996.
Perhaps they meant the Chinook IPT, stood up on 1 April 1999. Well, they didn’t inherit much, and had a clear-out of what they found.
Or the Air Staff files? The most benign of those were archived at the RAF HS a few years ago, and they happily release them under FoI, but in fact there’s so little of value it’s pointless.
Boscombe’s? Would QinetiQ be allowed to keep historical MoD files such as these, especially as they proved a series of very senior officers had lied?
For example, one important document MoD simply won’t answer questions about is the Certificate of Design for Safety Critical Software, for FADEC. Everyone knows it had to be signed by Boscombe Down, and they refused. But it’s seldom mentioned it also had to be signed by (what was) RSRE Malvern. No CoD? Not permitted in the aircraft.
And more fundamentally; no Controller Aircraft Release, no acceptance off-contract of production standard Mk2s. The status of the Mk2 when the CAR and RTS were issued? An unrepresentative ‘prototype’. First legal CAR? December 1995. Who issued a waiver against a mandate laid down by Controller Aircraft? It could only have been CA himself, or higher.
Given that in all probability only a fraction of the papers still exist, in 50, 100 years, whatever, the main evidence will still by that small part submitted to Lord Philip on a 482MB CD-ROM!