Did some returning space probe explode in the atmosphere without my noticing it, showering the Earth with a mysterious radiation which re-animates Private Member's Bills which should have died months ago?
Unbelievable as such a scenario might seem, it is surely no more bizarre than the sight of Labour's parliamentary committee emailing Labour MPs to encourage them to support the shamefully regressive (Conservative MP's) proposal to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act (FoI Act).
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker described it as "highly irregular" for the committee to ask "Labour MPs to support a Conservative Bill which was in opposition to Labour's official policy and its own FoI Act".
Martin Salter, a member of the Labour committee in question, said the committee was 'backing the bill because it would "plug the dangerous and unintended consequence" of private correspondence between an MP and a constitutent being released'.
This is a most revealing comment. First, it indicates that in drafting, debating and passing the FoI Act in the first place, the implication that it might apply to themselves clearly escaped the Labour legislators; second, it shows that they must have devoted a similar lack of attention to what the Act actually provides, as it explicitly protects against exactly this kind of disclosure.
Two things are blindingly clear:
1 - The FoI Act does not pose the threat to constituents' privacy which the Bill's proponents claim; in fact it includes provisions which explicitly protect that privacy*.
2 - The overwhelming public interest weighs on the side of parliament being subject to FoI, rather than an exempt from it;
On that basis, if MPs from both main parties vote in favour of this Bill on Friday, it can only be out of a desire to use the parliamentary process to serve their own interests over those of the public.
The crowning irony is that at the same time as they seek a blanket exemption from the constraints of their own legislation, the same MPs are actively pursuing policies of national identity and public-sector data-sharing which allow the aggregation citizens' personal data on an unprecedented scale.
How long will it be before they claim exemption from those laws too?
*Thanks to Richard Veryard for rightly querying my original assertion here, which was unhelpfully inaccurate. What I should have said was: "constituents' privacy is adequately protected by explicit exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act (specifically, Section 40 - Personal Information and Section 41 - Information provided in confidence)". Of these, section 40 explains how the Data Protection Act's definitions of personal data should apply when interpreting the Freedom of Information Act's provisions in this regard.
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