Whose House?
by Peter Bradwell
But from seemingly nowhere this private members bill has trotted into play. It's aim is to exempt an MPs correspondence from the remit of Act. Apparently there's some disagreement amongst Ministers about whether this is a good idea (hint: it's not). Martin Rosenbaum's blog has some stories on this - here, here, and here.
He makes an interesting point:
"Until now it has always been a pretty fundamental principle of how FOI has worked in practice that there is a stronger public interest case for the public to know what elected representatives are doing and saying than to know what private individuals or anyone else is doing or saying.
The intention of this Bill (if not yet its effect) would be to reverse this principle completely."
Faizal Farook
Run's House!
edward harkins
To weaken the Freedom of Information Act in the way proposed in the private member’s bill would be precipitate, contrary and undermine the whole basis of the Act. The FoI Act is one of New Labour’s significant achievements and a promise to the electorate made good. The bill is evidence of a worrying and growing alliance between a certain type of MP, those (most?) in the Civil Service and Local Authority admin who literally hate the Act. Their motives and aims are profoundly undemocratic (albeit these are to do with petty self-protection rather than a great conspiracy to overturn democracy as we know it).They cannot attack the Act in an open and directly-accountable way. For one thing that would go against the motives that drive them to undermine the Act in the first place. Secondly, it would be badly received by the public.So, instead we have a bit of trimming or cutting here, and a bit of obstruction there. For example, financial charges, opaque procedures and, in Scotland at least, a downright refusal to provide information. When the Scottish FoI Commissioner has been asked for help by applicants having problems in obtaining information from local authorities, he has ruled in favour of the applicant in the overwhelming majority of cases.And now, we have a bill to exempt just one privileged segment (MPs) – a segment that in the present political climate, the public would be least likely to grant exemption to.As for the argument about ‘would you want your personal correspondence with the electricty company being released’ … this was one standard argument put forward by every sector of the public service as a reason why the Act would be ‘unworkable’ for them. It didn’t hold then and it shoudn’t hold now, uniquelly, for our MPs.
Pete Bradwell
The Campaign for Freedom of Information has written to the committee considering the Bill. You can read the letter here.It seems to me to provide - in a fashion far clearer than I could manage - a good insight into why this amendment is either superfluous, reactionary, obstructive, or all three.
Bill Thompson
The only problem is that MPs are already exempt - the standard advice to MPs says clearly that 'Public authorities, not individuals, are subject to FoI which means that information held by Members in their individual capacity is not subject to FoI, even if stored, either physically orelectronically, at either House' - see http://www.w4mp.org/html/library/standardnotes/default.asp and follow the link to FOI. This would extend the exemption, and may be objectionable - but then would you want your personal correspondence with the electricity company about your mum's bill to be released to journalists?