Neutral or increasingly secretive?
As the Maclean Bill has been proceeding through Parliament over the past few months, one notable phenomenon has been the apparent reluctance of many of its MP supporters (with a few honourable exceptions) to appear on TV or radio to explain why they think Parliament should be exempt from freedom of information. The public debate on this issue has been remarkably one-sided.
However since Friday's vote the Labour MP Tom Watson has defended his backing for the Bill on , much to the exasperation of . (If you want to read a blogging MP who voted against the Bill, you could try .)
Now that the Bill is going to the Lords, it will be interesting to see if Lord Falconer speaks to it or leaves that to his junior in the Justice Ministry, Baroness Ashton. In January the Guardian that Falconer was then trying to get the government to block the Bill, warning his colleagues that unless it did so it would be perceived as an 'increasingly secretive government'. But the government decided to take an officially 'neutral' stance on the Bill, while generally suspected of encouraging it behind-the-scenes.
So assuming Lord Falconer still thinks the same way, will he manage to have more influence with his colleagues in the Lords?
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An effective way to embarrass the MPs who did not vote against this bill would be for their local papers to withdraw the columns they write,refuse to publish any publicity about their party and thirdly on the front page every week a picture of the MP a list of hie expenses with the question of why he does not want his constituents to know this.I would think that maybe losing the gravy train that is now a perk of being an MP might make them reconsider.
If someone took your salary at the end of the month and spent it for you - ouch, I can hear husbands/wives across the country screaming that already happens :) - you would surely, after the nose-punching, etc., want to know what they had spent it on. How do you react when they reply 'none of your business' ?
This mirrors the FOI, MP's are taking money from the public and spending it on who knows what - mars bars? call girls? subscriptions to Al Qaeda?. Now they say ok it is your money but how I spend it is none of your business.
MPs already enjoy considerable benefits not available to the vast majority of the public which, to some degree, classes them as an 'elite' group within our society. Surely this latest division is taking us further along the road to Animal Farm.
It is my belief that the separatism growing in Wales and, more strongly, in Scotland is driven not by desire to break up the UK, nor by a desire to specifically punish the government of the day - that's probably just a bonus :) - but its a reaction against the general conduct of our Westminster representatives.
The Lords are generally an older, and lets hope wiser, group who are probably mostly comfortable financially and less likely to be tempted by the vehicle of expenses as a source of 'extra dosh' to feed whatever habits MPs indulge.
Martin....I note Ed Balls (one of Gordon Brown's closest allies)has said that he backs an amendment to the Maclean bill making it compulsory for MP expenses to be published -- and not, as David Maclean proposes, left to the discretion of the individual Speaker. Could we soon see a shift in the Chancellor's position too? Last week Mr Brown's team said he had "no comment" to make on the Bill.
It's worth noting that this Bill only proposes that MPs' correspondence would be a qualified exemption. So public authorities could still publish MPs' letters about constituents if they considered that the public interest didn't prevent this.
The real impact would be clause 1(2) - the removal of Parliament from the list of public authorities covered by FoI. No public interest test there.
So, despite what the Bill's supporters are saying, their expenses would be better protected than their constituents' correspondence.