Robin Wilton's esoterica

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27 Apr · Fri 2007

MPs FoI exemption bill: not dead yet

David Maclean's Private Member's Bill (as blogged about previously) - the one which would exempt the houses of Parliament from the Freedom of Information legislation they enacted to cover all other public services - continues to twitch like a B-movie zombie.

As this BBC article indicates, some procedural quirk means that the Bill will be debated again on May 18th., despite having been 'talked out of time' last week by opposing MPs. The article also nicely illustrates some of the pernicious effects this bill would have if it got into force:

"The bill also protects all MPs' correspondence from release and stops authorities ... confirming or denying whether they have received a letter from an MP."

As you can see, the Bill's tentacles reach out into other bodies which would still have their Freedom of Information duties in other respects.

It is still a bad law, and it still deserves to die.

Posted by racingsnake @ 11:33 AM GMT+00:00 [ Comments [3] ]

Comments:

I was surprised (and pleased) to see this die – or at least go into a coma – so early this morning. Sensible comments by Richard Shepherd MP in the Telegraph yesterday:

"The expenses of all senior figures are available under the Act. People can read how much the Metropolitan Police Commissioner spent on his business lunches. The Lord Chief Justice's expenses are on the internet. So is the BBC director general's hospitality bill for entertaining at the Proms. Want to know what Ken Livingstone spends on taxi fares? The information has been disclosed. Why should MPs be different?"

Worrying that it needs to die, rather than be voted out positively.

Posted by John Sandell on April 27, 2007 at 12:50 PM GMT+00:00 #

Thanks John. Richard Shepherd's comments are indeed commendable - anyone following this thread should have a look at his clear and well-reasoned assessment. In particular, he blows the gaff on the claim that MPs' correspondence needs this further level of exemption from disclosure... it also reveals a shocking degree of ignorance on the part of many MPs, concerning the details of the Data Protection Act which they themselves put into force. His focus on the question of MPs expenses is a valid one; in debate, the Speaker of the House promised that MPs would not use this exemption to hide the details of their expenses - which is why I posed the question I did last Friday: "As a voter, would you trust our elected representatives to abide by the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, even if the law did not actually oblige them to do so?" If the answer to that were "yes", we would have no need of the Ministerial Code of Conduct, the Standards Body for England, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Register of Members' Interests and all the other various mechanisms through which the accountability of our elected representatives is supposed to be maintained. But the fact is, those mechanisms have had to be used time and time again, and if they were sufficient, we would not currently be watching the 'Cash for Peerages' scandal unfold.

Posted by Robin Wilton on April 27, 2007 at 01:48 PM GMT+00:00 #

Robin - Do you mind if I copy some of your comment to my MP (who happens to be shadow Constitutional Affairs Secretary). I'm not sure where he stands on the FoI Bill, but I like your 'trust' analysis and there's no harm in letting him know before 18 May. He invariably replies, so there might be interesting feedback.

Posted by John Sandell on April 27, 2007 at 03:00 PM GMT+00:00 #

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