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 |