The Wardman Wire

[Update.  This battle has been won and the attempt withdrawn after an extensive online campaign. But the war continues.]

From the Guardian:

Ministers are poised to exempt all MPs and peers from having to publish details of their expenses, only weeks before MPs were due to be forced to disclose more than 1.2 million receipts covering claims for the last three years.

This is going to place the expenses of MPs under a blanket of secrecy through a specific exemption to the Freedom of Information Laws. It will be done retrospectively, which means that all the disclosure gains that have been fought for will be lost, and the 1 million pounds that has been spent on preparing material for publication will be lost.

There is adetailed report on the Guardian website. Here is a little more detail.

Ministers are poised to exempt all MPs and peers from having to publish details of their expenses, only weeks before MPs were due to be forced to disclose more than 1.2 million receipts covering claims for the last three years.

The move next week will allow parliament to nullify all the long-fought victories by campaigners and journalists to force MPs to publish details of all their individual receipts for their second homes, including details of what they spent on furnishings, maintenance, rent, mortgage payments, staffing, travel, office staffing and equipment.

The changes will be retrospective and all pending requests for more information under the Freedom of Information Act will be blocked.

The changes will put MPs and peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will not have to disclose the full details of their expenses and allowances.

…

The proposed changes were contained in a parliamentary order released at the same time as the government announced proposals to build a third Heathrow runway, compensate policyholders at Equitable Life and MPs debated the crisis in Gaza.

…

MPs in both parties have already been embarrassed by disclosures under the FOI about their expenditure.

Examples released last year included Margaret Beckett, now the housing minister, claiming £1,920 for plants and pergola for her Derbyshire constituency home and the Labour MP for Stevenage, Barbara Follett, claiming £1,600 for cleaning the windows of her London home.

The move was not unanimously supported by ministers. It is understood that Jack Straw, the justice secretary, who is responsible for freedom of information legislation, objected to the move but was overruled by Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour party.

Read it all.

This is a disgrace, and needs to be stopped in its tracks. Now.

The simple point is that this is *our* information, and publication is essential to the functoning of our democracy MPs or Ministers have no justifiable reason whatsoever to withold the details, and especially to treat themselves as if they are some special caste exempt from normal laws.

That there are still attempts to do this is bizarre.

What you can do

There is a new Facebook Group, started by Tom Steinberg of MySociety: I object to MPs concealing their expenses. Please join the group, and take note of these suggestions:

1. Please write to your MP about this through http://www.WriteToThem.com - ask them to lobby against this concealment, and tell them that TheyWorkForYou will be permanently and prominently noting those MPs who took the opportunity to fight against this regressive move. The millions of constituents who will check this site before the next election will doutbtless be interested.

2. Join this facebook group and invite all your least political friends (plus your most political too). Send them personal mails, phone or text them. Encourage them to write to their politicians too.

3. Go to any online community that you are part of that is not connected to mySociety, and (politely) tell them why it matters. Could be fishing, knitting, student groups, am dram, residents association, whatever. It’s super important to get the message into non-usual quarters.

We can win this. BUT WE NEED YOU TO ACT. It’s exactly the sort of issue that isn’t worth senior politicians losing that much political capital over. Please help!

[Update: this is Tom's comment on the MySociety blog:

MySociety is strictly non-partisan, by mission and by ethics. However, when it looks like Parliament is about to take a huge step in the wrong direction on transparency, we’ve no problem at all with stepping up when changes happen that threaten both the public interest and the ongoing value of sites like TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow.]

Tags: house rules for parliament, mp expenses