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 Simon Burns (Conservative) on Monday, 23 April 2012 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Email

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

Answer: The Department's policy is to retain emails on the same basis as other records, according to business need, rather than for a specified period. Emails are retained in the Department's record keeping systems if they are needed for business use or accountability, and deleted as soon as possible when they no longer have business value. This policy reflects 'model 2' in the guidance issued by the Cabinet Office 'Guidance on Private Office Records' issued in 2009.Deleted emails may be recovered from system backups taken for business continuity purposes, provided they were present when a backup was taken.

Secondary information