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It's just another example of politicians doing what they want, the one that annoyed me recently was the buying tobacco products online vote, as I understand it, you now can from any other EU country, except good old Blighty!

OK, work hard, get rich and move abroad! although we better do it quickly as soon they will probably stop us doing that too!

For some analysis of application of FoI laws to Parliaments, see the Appendix to HC Research Paper on the Bill:

Of course, if the concerns of the Bill's supporters were really what they claim, they would have used the Bill to exempt the 2 other UK 'parliaments' (Norther Ireland and Welsh Assemblies) from the scope of the FoI Act. But, they dont - surely they dont regard the issue as simply one of Westminster being uniquely 'above the law'

Readers of the blog - and UK MPs - might be interested to note that yesterday the Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament gave a speech in which she called for the legislature to be brought within the scope of the Official Information Act in that country:

I was under the impression that there are exemptions to the amount of material that needs to be released. For instance, the Scottish Executive released some information to me with certain sections blacked out. If MPs are worried about their constituents being identified, then all they need to do is black this information out. The rest can surely be disclosed. Let the MPs work within the rules that they created and which affect every other public servant.

If this does not satisfy them, then I can only assume that they are looking for wider exemptions so that they can hide their own murkier dealings from the public.

As if to demonstrate that the motivation behind the Maclean Bill is as much self-interest as anything else, look at this extract from the PLP Committee email to Labour MPs urging them to attend on Friday and support the Bill (from Tony Lloyd, Angela Eagle, Kevan Jones, Ann Cryer, Joan Ruddock, Martin Salter and Don Touhig, on 9 May):

"Parliament already publishes a good deal of information and disclosure above and beyond that risks reducing Parliament’s stature."

Say no more!

The US Congress is not covered for reasons to do with the separation of powers eg. so that the executive cannot use the FOI Act to obtain documents from a Congressional investigation.

There is not a similar separation of powers in the UK, which is why we need the Act to cover Parliament. For example in the US you could never have a member of Congress as the head of a government department in the way MPs can be ministers in the parliamentary system. Such cross-over between the legislature and executive is forbidden in the USA.

Even so, Congress is far more transparent than the UK Parliament with regulations ensuring publication of detailed expense claims and lobbying. See my post on this at:

Ought we to be surprised by the contents of the PLP briefing note and its wilful misintepretation of what this is about? Probably not - after all, we're still under the Blair administration. However, it does sit uneasily with Gordon Brown's professed - and welcome - commitment to greater transparency and openness. If our MPs are unable to see - or prefer not to see - that this is a case of "one law for them, one law for us" - they really are in trouble.

TRUTH SPIN THEREFORE F.O.I IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH NEW LABOUR