The Weasel's FOI bill looks like it is going to die a slow death!

Well, it seems David MacLean's Freedom of information exemption bill is withering and dying because it is about as popular as a rattlesnake in a lucky dip as far as the House of Lords is concerned!

Who said the House of Lords needed reform!

Iain Dale did point out that this would happen yesterday here. It is definitely good news.

Conservatives to vote down weasels FOI exemption bill in the House of Lords!

David Cameron has just given a press conference in London in which he has said that the Conservative block in the House of Lords will vote down the Freedom of Information act.

Good.

With a bit of luck that will kill it stone dead. I wonder how all the loyal Brownites who supported the bill will feel, and what of Gordon Brown who has promised more open government but clearly does not believe in it, if you judge him by what his followers do?

Many thanks to Iain Dale who has more here.

You can also sign the petition against the bill here.

David Maclean's little secrets

It appears that the David Maclean, the MP who had his private members bill exempting MP's from the Freedom of Information act has his own little secrets he does not want aired all over the place.

For example he has claimed a £3,000 quad bike on expenses. To be fair he does have multiple sclerosis and the largest constituency in the land, so he can justify the bike, but it smells when he is involved in passing this sort of bill.

If he has spent money and it looks like a lot, he needs to explain himself. People will either accept the explanation or they wont. Hiding it is not an option.

The Mail on Sunday has this.

Here are the Weasels names

Just in case you are wondering which MP's turned out today to support the MP's exemption from the Freedom of Information act, here is a list (Not completely accurate as the full list is not yet available, this is those who voted on amendments.) See here for the Hansard record of the debate.

Ainsworth, rh Mr. Bob
Allen, Mr. Graham
Anderson, Janet
Atkinson, Mr. Peter
Bailey, Mr. Adrian
Bell, Sir Stuart
Betts, Mr. Clive
Blackman, Liz
Brown, rh Mr. Nicholas
Burgon, Colin
Burns, Mr. Simon
Butterfill, Sir John
Cairns, David
Campbell, Mr. Alan
Campbell, Mr. Ronnie
Chope, Mr. Christopher
Clark, Paul
Clelland, Mr. David
Cohen, Harry
David, Mr. Wayne
Dhanda, Mr. Parmjit
Donohoe, Mr. Brian H.
Doran, Mr. Frank
Dowd, Jim
Duddridge, James
Eagle, Angela
Eagle, Maria
Ellwood, Mr. Tobias
Fabricant, Michael
Fitzpatrick, Jim
Foster, Mr. Michael (Worcester)
Francois, Mr. Mark
Gardiner, Barry
Godsiff, Mr. Roger
Hall, Mr. Mike
Hammond, Stephen
Harris, Mr. Tom
Henderson, Mr. Doug
Heppell, Mr. John
Hill, rh Keith
Iddon, Dr. Brian
Irranca-Davies, Huw
Jones, Mr. Kevan
Jones, Mr. Martyn
Kemp, Mr. Fraser
Kirkbride, Miss Julie
Knight, rh Mr. Greg
Lammy, Mr. David
Laxton, Mr. Bob
Levitt, Tom
Lewis, Mr. Ivan
Lloyd, Tony
Maclean, rh David
MacShane, rh Mr. Denis
Mahmood, Mr. Khalid
Marshall, Mr. David
McAvoy, rh Mr. Thomas
McCabe, Steve
McCartney, rh Mr. Ian
McGovern, Mr. Jim
McIsaac, Shona
McNulty, Mr. Tony
Merron, Gillian
Michael, rh Alun
Morley, rh Mr. Elliot
Mudie, Mr. George
Munn, Meg
Murphy, Mr. Denis
Neill, Robert
Pelling, Mr. Andrew
Plaskitt, Mr. James
Pound, Stephen
Pritchard, Mark
Purchase, Mr. Ken
Randall, Mr. John
Robertson, John
Roy, Mr. Frank
Ruffley, Mr. David
Ryan, Joan
Salter, Martin
Shaw, Jonathan
Sheridan, Jim
Simon, Mr. Siôn
Smith, Ms Angela C. (Sheffield, Hillsborough)
Snelgrove, Anne
Spellar, rh Mr. John
Tami, Mark
Taylor, Ms Dari
Thomas, Mr. Gareth
Tredinnick, David
Vara, Mr. Shailesh
Ward, Claire
Watson, Mr. Tom
Watts, Mr. Dave
Wicks, Malcolm
Widdecombe, rh Miss Ann
Winterton, Ann
Winterton, Sir Nicholas
Woolas, Mr. Phil
Wright, David
Tellers for the Noes:
Mr. Andrew Dismore and
Mr. Tim Boswell

Why am I not surprised to see Sion Simon, the prat for Birmingham, Erdington voting for this wretched bill?

Weasels may get their bill!

Just in case you missed it the weasels are at it again trying to get MP's, but not MSP's, AM's or councilors an exemption from the Freedom of Information act.

The debate is still going on, and some valiant MP's are trying very hard to block it.

If you have not yet done so, I urge you so sign this petition against the bill!

I have for more information see here.

The BBC has this.

Weasels bill delayed until May 18th

The bill to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information act will not be debated today, but has been delayed until May the 18th. With a bit of luck it will then be kicked into the long grass.

The BBC has this.

You can read more about it here and here.

Weasels are trying to escape scrutiny again!

Apparently the bill to exclude Parliament from the Freedom of Information act has been revived as there are no other private members bills to be heard this Friday.

I wrote this on the subject before. The excuse is that they want to protect constituents private information. This is of course rubbish as that information is protected by the Freedom of Information act itself as well as the Data protection act. There is only one motive, to hide information that should rightly be in the public domain.

You can sign the petition against it here.

The BBC has this.

Hat tip to Lennon who posted the news on the politicalbetting.com website.

Weasels try to escape scrutiny

It appears some MP's are supporting a private members bill, laid before Parliament by Former Conservative chief whip David Maclean, a man who ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

The bill allows MP's exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, so that we can't find out how much MP's get in expenses and what for. This is trying to roll back transparency and is clearly wrong.

Regular readers will remember that Norman Baker, (Liberal Democrat) MP for Lewis spent two years trying to beat the expenses information out of the House of Commons which spent £17,000 resisting!

Anyway, there is now an online petition you can sign to register your disapproval of this bill, here, I have signed it and I urge you to sign it as well.

Fortunately there are many members across all parties who think this is a very bad idea as well.

The BBC has this.

The cost of Silence

Or rather, the cost of trying to keep Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes finding out in detail how much MP's spend on travel expenses and what sort of travel they spend them on.

The answer is £17,000.

The Commons Commission resisted Norman Baker's request under the freedom of Information Act for two years, arguing that giving him the information would breach data protection rules. It seemed they had something to hide. I don't know why. All it means is that MP's have to explain themselves if they seem to be spending a lot.

Of course now MP's are considering giving themselves a get out of the Freedom Of Information Act. That would be a big mistake. Anything that makes MP's look less accountable is bad for democracy and politics.

The BBC has this on the cost of trying to deny the request here and the story about the expenses here.

The House of Commons Commission webpage is here, and its membership is here.

Freedom of Information Act under threat

Yes that is right. This government which brought in the Freedom of Information act in 2000, is now looking for ways of curtailing it.

They want to set a limit on "FOI" requests in terms of costs to £600 for central government and £450 for local government and other agencies. The issue is how you arrive at that figure. They want to allow for management time as well. Staff time will be "charged" at £25 per hour. So if you ask a sticky question like where has all this money gone, or how much have you spent on something silly, that did not work out, they can have a management meeting with say six people for two hours, racking up £300 before they have asked a lawyer for advice.

They will also ration FOI requests by "group" and push unhelpful questioners down the list.

Now there is a cost argument as you could send in hundreds of requests and pester a department to it's wits end, but in fact the total cost saving of cutting the infringing FOI requests is estimated at £12 million, which in terms of a government budget of circa £500 billion is peanuts to get transparency.

In short it is a great way of getting out of answering awkward questions. Its wrong.

For more see Ellee Seymour's excellent article here.

Meanwhile I am still waiting for my first answer on an FOI request. Apparently the Home Office only starts the clock ticking once they have worked out which department should deal with it!