Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Continue to disclose MPs' correspondence — rejected — 18 May 2007 at 11:30

The majority of MPs voted against changing the proposed Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill (designed to remove Parliament and MPs from the power of the Freedom of Information Act 2000) to not include the exemption for MPs' correspondence.

The Bill was to add the following Freedom of Information exemption:

  • Information is exempt information if it consists of correspondence between a Member of Parliament and a public authority, as listed in Schedule 1 of this Act.
  • The duty to confirm or deny does not arise in relation to information which is exempt information by virtue of this section.

The proposal, which MPs voted against, would have deleted this provision, and kept only the part which prevented the Freedom of Information laws from applying to Parliament (and to MPs' expenses). But since the official purpose of this Bill was to protect MPs' correspondence (as opposed to the actual reason of hiding their expenses) they had to vote to keep it.

The vote to start discussion on this amendment was made in Division 119.

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
Con22 (+1 tell) 5014.3%
Lab78 (+1 tell) 14026.4%
LDem0 13 (+2 tell)023.8%
PC0 1033.3%
Total:100 33022.3%

Rebel Voters - sorted by vote

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
James ClappisonHertsmereCon (front bench)aye
Jeremy CorbynIslington NorthLabaye
Jim CousinsNewcastle upon Tyne CentralLab (minister)aye
Frank FieldBirkenheadLab (minister)aye
Mark FisherStoke-on-Trent CentralLabaye
Kate HoeyVauxhallLabaye
Philip HolloboneKetteringCon (front bench)aye
Glenda JacksonHampstead and HighgateLabaye
Gerald KaufmanManchester, GortonLab (minister)aye
Sally KeebleNorthampton NorthLab (minister)aye
Martin LintonBatterseaLab (minister)aye
Fiona MactaggartSloughLab (minister)aye
John MaplesStratford-on-AvonCon (front bench)aye
Dan NorrisWansdykeLab (minister)aye
John RedwoodWokinghamConaye
Barry SheermanHuddersfieldLab (minister)aye
Richard ShepherdAldridge-BrownhillsCon (front bench)aye
Peter SoulsbyLeicester SouthLab (minister)aye
David WinnickWalsall NorthLab (minister)aye

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