MPs denied right to hide their corruption and incompetence from public scrutiny

MPs block FoI curbs


Hélène Mulholland and agencies
Friday April 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

MPs today scuppered a bill that would have exempted politicians from freedom of information inquiries.

The legislation, if passed, would have curbed requests about issues such MPs' expenses and allowances.

David Maclean, a former Tory chief whip, brought in the private members' freedom of information amendment bill, arguing the proposed changes to the existing legislation were needed to protect MPs' constituency correspondence from disclosure.

But a handful of MPs opposed moves to exempt parliament and all communications between MPs and public bodies from FoI requests.

Spearheading the opposition, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrats' constitutional affairs spokesman, said that introducing the changes would be "extremely bad politics".

Mr Hughes said: "The public want to know what we are doing and in particular they want to know how we spend money on their behalf. I think it would be regarded as completely beyond acceptable if we said you can't know some or all of the information about what we do."

A handful of MPs from all parties managed to talk out the planned bill at its third reading by making sure the debate continued for five hours.

This means that the bill now goes to the bottom of the queue for private members' bills and has virtually no chance of becoming law unless it gets government backing

Unusually for a private members' bill, it also cleared its committee stage - suggesting tacit support from the government. Labour's David Winnick said that the bill made a "mockery" of the House of Commons and would lead to the suspicion that MPs were trying to "hide" details of expenses and travel allowances.

He accused the government of "collaborating" with Mr Maclean by letting the bill go through.

But Bridget Prentice, the junior constitutional affairs minister, insisted that the government's position was neutral and it was a matter for MPs.

Norman Baker, a Lib Dem MP who successfully fought a two-year FoI battle for a detailed breakdown of MPs' travel expenses, said that constituency correspondence was already protected under the act's existing exemptions and data protection laws.

Mr Maclean said that he had been assured that general details of expenses and allowances would still be published if the bill became law.

But he conceded that there was nothing to stop this being reversed in the future.

A rebel bid to ensure that MPs would still have to reveal their expenses if the bill became law was later defeated by 46 votes to six.

A further amendment to prevent the Commons and the Lords being exempt from the FoI Act was also defeated by 46 votes to six.