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Bid to maintain secrecy on MPs' expenses branded 'disgraceful'
The Government was branded "disgraceful" last night after launching yet another bid to avoid publishing details of their generous expenses.
Under proposals tabled by Commons Leader Harriet Harman, Parliament will get key exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.
The move will be backdated to nullify rulings by the High Court and Information Tribunal that receipt-by-receipt breakdowns for how public money is spent must be published.
To compensate, the Commons is set to issue slightly more
information than before about how MPs use their allowances.
The plans, slipped out yesterday afternoon amid the furore over expanding Heathrow Airport, constitute the latest stage in the Commons authorities' rearguard action to avoid full disclosure. They come despite the House already having spent up to 1m processing about a million receipts – which could now never see the light of day.
Outlining the changes to MPs yesterday afternoon, Ms Harman made no reference to the FOI rulings or receipts. She insisted that in future their expenses would be listed under twice as many headings, but disclosure had to be "affordable and proportionate".
"The public will have more information than they ever have before and we will take it back to 2005 so that for all Members, each year their allowances against 26 headings will be made public," she said.
There will also be tighter auditing of the controversial 93m-a-year parliamentary allowances system, according to Ms Harman. But Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said people would ask what their elected representatives had to hide.
"It is an absolute disgrace that the Government are going to such absurd lengths to keep MPs' expenses secret from the very people who pay the bills," he added."This is taxpayers' money, these are elected representatives and the people have a right to know how their money is being spent."
The Campaign for Freedom of Information said there was "no justification" for MPs facing less scrutiny than other public officials. Director Maurice Frankel said: "The individual expenses claims of senior officials across the public sector are publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act.
"Chief Constables, local authority chief executives, senior BBC executives and others have to release their individual expenses claims, and that should be the case for MPs too."
The Commons authorities ran up a bill of some 150,000 over three years fighting FOI requests demanding disclosure of a receipt-by-receipt breakdown of MPs' spending on second homes.
They appeared to have finally admitted defeat last May after the High Court backed the Information Tribunal's decision.
However, the autumn deadline for publication passed with officials complaining that the processing process – expected to cost about 1m – was proving more complex than first thought.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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