Written question asked by John Denham (Labour) on Tuesday, 27 March 2012, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 16 April 2012. It was answered by Lord Benyon (Conservative) on Tuesday, 1 May 2012 on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

E-mail

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what her policy is on the period for which emails sent and received by (a) Ministers, (b) officials, and (c) special advisers in her Department are retained; and whether such emails are recoverable from the IT systems in her Department after that period.

Answer: E-mail policy in DEFRA states that e-mail messages which form part of the official record are saved for as long as business needs require and stored corporately in accordance with departmental record management procedures (specific retention periods exist for all official records and are set depending on the nature of the material). This policy covers all use of DEFRA's e-mail system and therefore covers Ministers, officials and special advisers. DEFRA's guidance on e-mail management emphasises the importance of capturing all significant e-mail messages.Once deleted, e-mails are recoverable for six weeks.

Secondary information