Harman must explain expenses plan

Monday, January 19, 2009

The government's decision to make MPs' expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information (FoI) act has been criticised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Campaign for Freedom of Information.

Committee chairman Sir Christopher Kelly – who said he has asked Harriet Harman to explain the plans which go against "one of the fundamental principles for standards in public life, the principle of transparency" – said that MPs shouldn't claim expenses if they were not prepared to reveal what they are for.

He told the Daily Telegraph: "MPs above all should be subject to the Freedom of Information law since they are the ones who made it. I do not think that anyone has really made the case for this change. It is, to say the least, very disappointing that they have chosen not to apply the same approach to themselves that they apply to others."

He added: "Of course it will be irritating for them if someone wants to query whether they needed to spend that much money on a sofa for their flat in London. But if they are not prepared to defend that they should not have the allowances."

The Campaign for Freedom of Information's director Maurice Frankel reckoned there was no justification for MPs to have "a lower level of scrutiny" than senior officials across the public sector. "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," he said.

He added that the FoI Act was amended in July 2008 to exclude MPs' addresses from the scope of requests and to prevent the disclosure of any regular spending on travel or future travel arrangements. These changes were justified as necessary to protect MPs' security but the new proposals cannot be justified in the same way.

The plans are to be debated in the House of Commons on January.