MP's Expenses Still Subject to FOI

A few days back I heard about the governments plans to exempt MP’s expenses from freedom of informatioin requests. They announced it last Thursday, sneakily hidden under the Heathrow third runway announcement.

Anyway, I joined this Facebook Group, and send my MP (Patricia Hewett) this email…

Monday 19 January 2009

Dear Patricia Hewitt,

I’m writing to ask you to vote against the draft Freedom of Information
(Parliament) Order 2009 this Thursday. I feel that an effective
Parliament, which works for the the people, should be an open and
transparent Parliament. I hope that you agree with me on this matter,
and vote against the draft this Thursday.

Kindest regards

Craig Russell

And sitting in my inbox this morning was her reply…

Dear Craig Russell,

Thank you for you email regarding the application of the Freedom of
Information Act to MPs expenses.

I have always believed that we need to have greater openness and
accountability about MPs’ expenses. The proposals that the House will be
voting on tomorrow will achieve these goals. In particular, they will
give the public far more detail about expense claims than the present
system and will establish a system of independent audit, including
random checks, by the National Audit Office. I will therefore be
supporting them.

I do not, however, believe that it is sensible or necessary for the
House of Commons to check, scan and publish every single receipt for
every single item of expenditure involved – which is what appears to be
required by the recent decision in various Freedom of Information Act
cases. However, the proposal not to apply the Freedom of Information Act
to MPs’ expenses has now apparently been withdrawn.

Thank you again for writing to me on this issue,

Yours sincerely

Patricia Hewitt

There’s no “apparently” about it. The governemt has been given a bit of a rough time about the FOI exemption plans these past few days. And yesterday they backed down on that part of the proposal.

So – a good result really!