Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Keep disclosure for MPs' expenses — rejected — 20 Apr 2007 at 12:45

The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill was designed to exclude Parliament and all MPs' business from the power of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In this division, the majority of MPs voted against limiting the power of this Bill so that their expenses would continue to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The limitation would have worked by altering the words of "House of Commons" and "House of Lords" in Schedule 1 to read:

  • House of Commons/Lords, but in relation to the House of Commons/Lords only in relation to information concerning the expenditure of any member of that House in execution of their public duties.

The sponsor of this Bill, David Maclean MP, argued that this Bill was necessary because of a growing problem of the MPs correspondence being released under Freedom of Information Laws.[3] In the later debate he exhibited a letter sent by Martin Salter MP to a local authority on behalf of a constituent in which names had not been redacted.[4]

The proposed limitation to this sweeping change shown up by this vote tested whether this was the real reason, and not merely an attempt to hide their expenses.

The timing of this Bill followed shortly after MPs lost an important legal battle to prevent disclosure of their expenses under the Freedom of Information Act.[2]

Andrew Dismore MP argued that this change wasn't necessary because "Mr. Speaker has made it clear that expenses and allowances would continue to be published."[1]

This issue was tested again in the next division Division 95

Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Con11 (+2 tell) 107.1%
Lab35 4011.1%
LDem0 1 (+2 tell)04.8%
Total:46 609.2%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
Richard ShepherdAldridge-BrownhillsCon (front bench)aye
Lyn BrownWest HamLab (minister)aye
Mary CreaghWakefieldLab (minister)aye
Martin LintonBatterseaLab (minister)aye
David WinnickWalsall NorthLab (minister)aye

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