On Expenses (formerly Bringing Down the House) will have its first broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm on Tuesday February 23rd. Don’t miss it!! I’ve done an interview with Martin Bell for the Radio Times and will be in tomorrow’s (Feb 16th) Woman’s Own magazine for those who want a taste of what’s to come.

Two-time BAFTA winner Anna Maxwell Martin is holding her own against a slew of older men playing the parts of the old boys network in Parliament. I’m sure she’ll give ‘em hell.

There’s a rumour that I might be an extra in the film. We’ll have to just wait and see on that.

Stay tuned.

Super-injunctions do limit freedom of speech, Speaker’s lawyers advise
• Guidance contradicts justice minister’s stance
• Select committee fears for parliamentary privilege

But that is to overlook the historic tradition whereby MPs don’t give a fig about the invasion of our privacy, civil liberties or freedom of speech up until they find their own affected.

Who cares about the common man’s freedom of speech being stifled by the world’s worst libel law when you have granted yourself immunity from it through parliamentary privilege? It was a similar story with draconian and disturbingly far-ranging anti-terrorist laws that were all very well up until an MP was arrested in his office (Damien Green MP) or bugged while visiting a prison inmate (Sadiq Khan MP). Then – suddenly – MPs had second thoughts about the totalitarian culture they had nurtured.

Therefore as a result of MPs now finding themselves liable under the libel law I conclude that libel reform is set to become a top priority on the legislative agenda. You read it here first!

This was re-stated in a minister’s written answer yesterday in parliament.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm091110/text/91110w0010.htm

10 Nov 2009 : Column 218W

Prisons: Freedom of Information

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether he has plans to extend to private prisons the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. [298646]

Mr. Wills: On 16 July, the Government published the response to its consultation on extending the Freedom of Information Act by means of a section 5 order. It noted that it was not minded to include private prisons in an initial order. However, the Government have made it clear it intends to keep the extension of the Act under review.

It’s long been an ambition to get a grilling from him. Oooh!

And it certainly made up for having to debate with Sir Stuart Bell yet again.

You can check out the online repartee on Youtube.

I received an email while away on holiday the other week: “The Committee having weighed the risks decided to publish the submission.”

It is available to view at: http://public-standards.org.uk/Library/MP_Expenses_E681_Heather_Brooke.pdf [PDF]

Journalism.co.uk reports it will now try and find out what happened to the other 66 submissions.

All requested ‘redactions’ are already in the public domain: Keith Vaz’s wheelie bin bill and train tickets are published on parliament’s own website along with Ann Widdecombe’s train ticket. The facts about Derek Conway and Michael Trend are widely published and appear in parliamentary reports and debate. If I’m missing something do let me know but otherwise this seems perfectly outrageous and I will not be agreeing to the requested censoring. And you thought Soviet Russia was bad.

Dear Ms Brooke,

Further to our telephone conversation yesterday, please see the list of suggested redactions below. When would be a good time to call you to discuss?
· On the second page, in the second paragraph redact from “That is how” to “Derek Conway”.

· On the second page, in the third paragraph redact the sentence “we do not know the full motivation of the person who exposed Derek Conway.”

· On the third page, in the paragraph under the heading “Reaction of travel information” redact from “Keith Vaz” to “based on reality”. Then redact from “it was precisely” to “blackout” at the end of the paragraph. [DN: This means redacting most of the paragraph, but leaves the basic point that redacting information on direction of travel makes it difficult for the public / media to scrutinise expense claims]

· On the third page under the heading “publish addresses” redact from “Keith Vaz” to “blocked toilet etc”.

· on the last page in the first paragraph redact from “when I heard” to “to view these receipts”.

Ruth Alaile
Secretary to the Committee on Standards in Public Life

What keeps people out of power and out of politics is the lack of access to meaningful and useful information. My experience since 2004 has been that Parliament greedily hoards information as a miser does gold. And just as a miser’s hoarding means his gold does not benefit the wider economy so parliament’s insistence on hoarding information does not benefit civic society. Instead citizens remain ignorant about the very institution that is meant to epitomise democracy in this country. If this is happening in Parliament then how much worse is it lower down the scale?

Parliament sets an example to public servants and public bodies throughout the nation, which is why it is so appalling to see the way MPs and officials in parliament behaved when faced with a robust freedom of information challenge. They did not rise to the challenge but actively fought to obstruct it and to suppress information clearly in the public interest. They fought for four years and at great public expense. In the process they demeaned terms such as national security and privacy. Parliament is not, in my view, a system open to full participatory democracy. At least officials are now adopting the right rhetoric about democracy and transparency – which is a victory in itself – but the real victory comes when the practice changes. And that has not happened yet. I hope this committee’s recommendations will go so some way to ensuring that real, tangible change takes place so that we have a parliament suited to 21st century democracy.

I would like to talk specifically about my experience trying to access information from Parliament, in particular trying to get details of MPs’ expense claims. You may have read about my story in the Guardian which I’ve included with this statement, so I’ll be brief.

My battle began in 2004. I was working on a book called ‘Your Right to Know’, a guide for citizens on how to use the new Freedom of Information Act. It might be worth giving a bit of background on why I decided to write such a book.

I’d trained and worked as a journalist in America. First as a political reporter and then covering crime. The American style of journalism relies heavily on official public records. It may be why some British journalists describe US papers as boring and academic. In the US all states have laws on public records, open meetings and freedom of information. The default position is generally that any organisation receiving the bulk of its funding from the taxpayer must be directly accountable to the public. Of course there are instances where this ideal is not adhered to but for the most part I found that locally, information was widely and easily available. For example, doing the crime beat consisted not just of talking to various police officers but also looking through all the criminal incident reports, going to the jail to look through the booking sheets, scouring court documents, looking at fire inspection reports, etc.

These records are not available in the UK. In fact until October 2007 it was actually illegal for a fireman to let the public see the results of a fire safety inspection: done at public cost and in the public’s name. This is one of the 300+ prohibitions on disclosure that exist in the UK. The type of reporting I am used to doing is just not possible in Britain. Here a reporter has to rely almost entirely on people. Information is not available to all, no strings attached as a statutory right, but comes at the discretion of an individual. There is a kind of quid pro quo to accessing information in the UK that I find uncomfortable and I don’t believe it benefits society. I always find it odd how so many British politicians complain about the sensationalist British press and then refuse to provide any of the official data needed for a more serious, academic journalistic inquiry.

I’d heard rumours back then about MPs’ expenses. The problem was they were rumours. Lobby journalists heard rumours, sometimes they wrote about them, other times they didn’t, either for political reasons or simply to keep a source friendly. I’m no good at this sort of journalism. Maybe I lack the people skills. When I go for information I don’t want it to come with any strings attached. I don’t want to have to make deals or promise favours. I just want the facts. I found when it came to parliamentary expenses these were pretty slim on the ground. It’s worth pointing out that not one of the misuses of MPs’ expenses has been exposed through access to official information. It has always been via the press through leaks or whistleblowers. That is how the former MP Michael Trend was exposed which led to the requirement in 2003 that receipts were needed for claims above £250. It was an insider who led to the exposure of Derek Conway. This is, of course, how the Daily Telegraph got its information.

This may be how it is done in the UK and you may think ‘so what’. But I think this system is wrong. It is effectively a class system of access to information. The privileged and powerful get access, the common citizenry does not. Information comes into the public domain with unseen strings attached. We do not know the full motivation of the person who exposed Derek Conway. And really why should his constituents have to wait for this whistleblower to learn the facts? Why should the British people have to wait to read the Daily Telegraph to find out information which I fought for since 2004 and which the public paid for? The current system is unfair and undemocratic.

My battle for parliamentary information was not confined to MPs’ second homes allowances. I have sought a detailed breakdown of travel claims, the names and salaries of MPs’ staff (which was blocked personally by the Speaker), how expenses were scanned in, how parliamentary groups were set up, canteen subsidies, incidents within parliament, etc. Even trying to find out the date of the most recent publication on June 18th was mired in rumour and secrecy. No one took individual responsibility for the publication nor was there an official statement about the date and logistics of disclosure until the night before.

My FOI requests are answered on the last possible day or overdue. I believe I am treated as good as, if not better, than most requesters. I find the service overly formal though not impolite. Where a telephone call could sort out many problems, the Commons will always opt for a formal letter that often requires more time and effort from both parties. When I asked for the breakdown on MPs’ Additional Costs Allowances it was refused on the grounds it would cost too much to disclose the information for all MPs. At no point did the FOI officer provide the advice and assistance under section 16 of the FOIA so I could narrow down my request. Instead the first response to a complex request is refusal. Only after I appeal, do the Commons reluctantly enter into negotiation.

I don’t know whether this is due to outright obstruction. I get the sense there is also a huge amount of incompetence particularly in the area of technology. This might not be such a problem if the parliamentary officials were open and willing to accept offers of outside help. But they are not. As I said, they greedily sit on their information piles like a golum. Tom Steinberg I’m sure will speak more on this matter of technical problems in accessing parliamentary date.

Recommendations for change

It is one thing for a politician to say he or she is committed to transparency and direct accountability it is another entirely to act on those commitments. I hope the committee will be rightly sceptical of political promises made here and elsewhere by those in power.

Redaction of travel information
One of the more egregious areas of censorship in the official publication of MPs’ expenses has been on addresses and travel information. Keith Vaz, for example, put forward tube tickets with everything blacked out except the price. Is there some state secret in knowing if he’s on a single or return ticket to zone one or two? Ann Widdecombe’s train ticket for £30.90 is void of destination. This is silly in the extreme. We are here dealing with disaster-movie scenarios not privacy or security concerns based on reality. Some travel expenses cannot be claimed for travel between MPs’ homes and their normal places of work. Yet lacking the dates of travel and destination there is no way to police this. It was precisely the time and destination of travel that led to the resignation of two MSPs. Former Tory MSP leader David McLetchie was forced to resign when it became clear that his £11,500 taxi bill involved not just travelling to his constituency for parliamentary work but going to his own legal offices. Brian Montieth was forced to pay back £250 after admitting false claims for taxis not for any parliamentary work but returning home after nights out on the town in Edinburgh. Any similar abuses would remain hidden in the current blackout.

Publish addresses
We have only to see how the Commons authorities have handled the official publication to see the culture of secrecy remains relatively intact. Removing the addresses makes it impossible to uncover the larger scandal of house flipping for the avoidance of capital gains tax. Any publication devoid of main and second home addresses will keep the public transfixed by trivia: Keith Vaz charging the taxpayer for his wheelie bin collections, MPs’ ordering videos of themselves speaking on the floor, Gordon Brown’s blocked toilet, etc. The High Court judges ruled that publication of addresses was necessary to ensure the system was not abused and that ‘there was a legitimate public interest well capable of providing such justification’. The Committee needs to deal with MPs’ successful attempt to circumvent this High Court ruling. If full addresses are not published then at least the first section of a postcode could be disclosed for accountability purposes.

Expectation of privacy
Wherever a public official claims public money in the course of their public duties there should be no expectation of privacy but rather an expectation to account for that spending directly to the public.

Parliamentary Standards Authority
I have grave concerns about the Government’s proposed Parliamentary Standards Authority. This government has a habit of proposing more bureaucracy and legislation as the solution to any and all problems. Often it only creates more. Just because Harriet Harman says the Parliamentary Standards Authority will be independent is no reason to assume that will be the case. No new laws or bureaucracies should be created without all the details being known, published and debated. Listening to her testimony at the committee I found these details to be in short supply. It is not right that those with power are continually given the benefit of all doubt while those without power are increasingly not trusted to do anything without supervision by the state. More information must be published before any substantial expenditure of funds is made to create a new bureaucracy.

It is disingenuous for MPs’ to place the blame for the scandal solely on the Fees Office. The Green Book made clear that the final decision on expense claims rested entirely with individual MPs and all MPs had to sign their claim forms: “I confirm that I incurred these costs wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to stay overnight away from my only or main home for the purpose of performing my duties as a Member of parliament.”

The problem wasn’t so much the Fees Office but the total lack of transparency and direct accountability. That is not going to change with the creation of a new bureaucracy. Isn’t it odd that it was only in the Information Tribunal hearing February 2008 that I finally discovered how the expense system worked and that the man in charge was Andrew Walker? For some reason this basic information was kept under wraps. Why are people’s names and responsibilities a state secret? This is perhaps the single biggest problem affecting efficiency and civic engagement in the UK. Citizens have no clue as to who is responsible for what. I believe this wall of faceless bureaucratic anonymity is there on purpose to keep the people ignorant and unable to meaningfully challenge those in power.

Conclusion
Any new system must have clear lines of authority. We must know by name who is responsible for what. And by this I don’t mean which minister but the name of the actual person doing the job. We don’t need more layers of bureaucracy. The most efficient way to keep politicians’ claims within acceptable limits is for the receipts to be directly available to constituents. This is how it was done in Washington state back in 1992. There, the receipts were a public record and anyone could go and have a look. It was this knowledge that I believe made politicians think very carefully about what they claimed on expenses. They very much understood it was not their money and because of transparency and direct accountability their claims were all above board. The public should be able to see expense data for themselves.

This brings me to the core problem of the culture in parliament. It is a culture that shows deep disrespect and distrust for the common person, the general public, the masses. We can’t pretend to be a democracy when we have this elitist mindset that the public can’t be trusted. When I heard Harriet Harman say ‘trust me’ about the creation of the Parliamentary Standards Authority what I thought was that she wants us to trust her even while she doesn’t trust us, the constituents, to view these receipts.

I understand this fear. It’s not irrational to fear the unthinking mob. But the best way to counter this danger is to ensure the electorate are educated and informed. That is why it is so ironic that such efforts have been made by politicians to keep the people uninformed and ignorant.

What must be kept in mind is that it is the people who gave MPs their power and so it must be to the people to whom they are accountable: directly and forthrightly – with no middlemen in between.

Well that’s not entirely true. As of yesterday, my submission went missing and I received the following email:

Dear Ms Brooke

Our lawyers have advised us not publish your submission due to the following reason:

“it contains statements about named individuals which are potentially defamatory.”

We are currently seeking their clarification and requesting suitable redaction.

Once we have this, I will forward them to you for your authority, in writing, to the redaction. We will then be able to publish your submission.

Anju Still
Business Manager
Committee on Standards in Public Life

You can read my statement yourself and decide. There’s very little about named politicians and what there is has already been published elsewhere. But more to the point – what sort of public inquiry is it where those giving evidence can’t speak freely and have to worry about being clobbered by the world’s worst libel law? I don’t think the take-down of my statement is necessarily the fault of the Committee and to be fair, lawyers are always risk averse. What is a disgrace is that it should even be a risk to publish evidence given to a committee set up to investigate parliament. There’s also the shameless double standard: That MPs and those giving evidence to MPs are protected from libel by parliamentary privilege, yet those giving evidence to a public inquiry investigating MPs have no such protection. A pretty scandalous state of affairs for a so-called democracy.

It would be very funny indeed if I were to receive a libel writ from an MP for my evidence given to a public inquiry investigating MPs.

What keeps people out of power and out of politics is the lack of access to meaningful and useful information. My experience since 2004 has been that Parliament greedily hoards information as a miser does gold. And just as a miser’s hoarding means his gold does not benefit the wider economy so parliament’s insistence on hoarding information does not benefit civic society. Instead citizens remain ignorant about the very institution that is meant to epitomise democracy in this country. If this is happening in Parliament then how much worse is it lower down the scale?

Parliament sets an example to public servants and public bodies throughout the nation, which is why it is so appalling to see the way MPs and officials in parliament behaved when faced with a robust freedom of information challenge. They did not rise to the challenge but actively fought to obstruct it and to suppress information clearly in the public interest. They fought for four years and at great public expense. In the process they demeaned terms such as national security and privacy. Parliament is not, in my view, a system open to full participatory democracy. At least officials are now adopting the right rhetoric about democracy and transparency – which is a victory in itself – but the real victory comes when the practice changes. And that has not happened yet. I hope this committee’s recommendations will go so some way to ensuring that real, tangible change takes place so that we have a parliament suited to 21st century democracy.

I would like to talk specifically about my experience trying to access information from Parliament, in particular trying to get details of MPs’ expense claims. You may have read about my story in the Guardian which I’ve included with this statement, so I’ll be brief.

My battle began in 2004. I was working on a book called ‘Your Right to Know’, a guide for citizens on how to use the new Freedom of Information Act. It might be worth giving a bit of background on why I decided to write such a book.

I’d trained and worked as a journalist in America. First as a political reporter and then covering crime. The American style of journalism relies heavily on official public records. It may be why some British journalists describe US papers as boring and academic. In the US all states have laws on public records, open meetings and freedom of information. The default position is generally that any organisation receiving the bulk of its funding from the taxpayer must be directly accountable to the public. Of course there are instances where this ideal is not adhered to but for the most part I found that locally, information was widely and easily available. For example, doing the crime beat consisted not just of talking to various police officers but also looking through all the criminal incident reports, going to the jail to look through the booking sheets, scouring court documents, looking at fire inspection reports, etc.

These records are not available in the UK. In fact until October 2007 it was actually illegal for a fireman to let the public see the results of a fire safety inspection: done at public cost and in the public’s name. This is one of the 300+ prohibitions on disclosure that exist in the UK. The type of reporting I am used to doing is just not possible in Britain. Here a reporter has to rely almost entirely on people. Information is not available to all, no strings attached as a statutory right, but comes at the discretion of an individual. There is a kind of quid pro quo to accessing information in the UK that I find uncomfortable and I don’t believe it benefits society. I always find it odd how so many British politicians complain about the sensationalist British press and then refuse to provide any of the official data needed for a more serious, academic journalistic inquiry.

I’d heard rumours back then about MPs’ expenses. The problem was they were rumours. Lobby journalists heard rumours, sometimes they wrote about them, other times they didn’t, either for political reasons or simply to keep a source friendly. I’m no good at this sort of journalism. Maybe I lack the people skills. When I go for information I don’t want it to come with any strings attached. I don’t want to have to make deals or promise favours. I just want the facts. I found when it came to parliamentary expenses these were pretty slim on the ground. It’s worth pointing out that not one of the misuses of MPs’ expenses has been exposed through access to official information. It has always been via the press through leaks or whistleblowers. That is how the former MP Michael Trend was exposed which led to the requirement in 2003 that receipts were needed for claims above £250. It was an insider who led to the exposure of Derek Conway. This is, of course, how the Daily Telegraph got its information.

This may be how it is done in the UK and you may think ‘so what’. But I think this system is wrong. It is effectively a class system of access to information. The privileged and powerful get access, the common citizenry does not. Information comes into the public domain with unseen strings attached. We do not know the full motivation of the person who exposed Derek Conway. And really why should his constituents have to wait for this whistleblower to learn the facts? Why should the British people have to wait to read the Daily Telegraph to find out information which I fought for since 2004 and which the public paid for? The current system is unfair and undemocratic.

My battle for parliamentary information was not confined to MPs’ second homes allowances. I have sought a detailed breakdown of travel claims, the names and salaries of MPs’ staff (which was blocked personally by the Speaker), how expenses were scanned in, how parliamentary groups were set up, canteen subsidies, incidents within parliament, etc. Even trying to find out the date of the most recent publication on June 18th was mired in rumour and secrecy. No one took individual responsibility for the publication nor was there an official statement about the date and logistics of disclosure until the night before.

My FOI requests are answered on the last possible day or overdue. I believe I am treated as good as, if not better, than most requesters. I find the service overly formal though not impolite. Where a telephone call could sort out many problems, the Commons will always opt for a formal letter that often requires more time and effort from both parties. When I asked for the breakdown on MPs’ Additional Costs Allowances it was refused on the grounds it would cost too much to disclose the information for all MPs. At no point did the FOI officer provide the advice and assistance under section 16 of the FOIA so I could narrow down my request. Instead the first response to a complex request is refusal. Only after I appeal, do the Commons reluctantly enter into negotiation.

I don’t know whether this is due to outright obstruction. I get the sense there is also a huge amount of incompetence particularly in the area of technology. This might not be such a problem if the parliamentary officials were open and willing to accept offers of outside help. But they are not. As I said, they greedily sit on their information piles like a golum. Tom Steinberg I’m sure will speak more on this matter of technical problems in accessing parliamentary date.

Recommendations for change

It is one thing for a politician to say he or she is committed to transparency and direct accountability it is another entirely to act on those commitments. I hope the committee will be rightly sceptical of political promises made here and elsewhere by those in power.

Redaction of travel information
One of the more egregious areas of censorship in the official publication of MPs’ expenses has been on addresses and travel information. Keith Vaz, for example, put forward tube tickets with everything blacked out except the price. Is there some state secret in knowing if he’s on a single or return ticket to zone one or two? Ann Widdecombe’s train ticket for £30.90 is void of destination. This is silly in the extreme. We are here dealing with disaster-movie scenarios not privacy or security concerns based on reality. Some travel expenses cannot be claimed for travel between MPs’ homes and their normal places of work. Yet lacking the dates of travel and destination there is no way to police this. It was precisely the time and destination of travel that led to the resignation of two MSPs. Former Tory MSP leader David McLetchie was forced to resign when it became clear that his £11,500 taxi bill involved not just travelling to his constituency for parliamentary work but going to his own legal offices. Brian Montieth was forced to pay back £250 after admitting false claims for taxis not for any parliamentary work but returning home after nights out on the town in Edinburgh. Any similar abuses would remain hidden in the current blackout.

Publish addresses
We have only to see how the Commons authorities have handled the official publication to see the culture of secrecy remains relatively intact. Removing the addresses makes it impossible to uncover the larger scandal of house flipping for the avoidance of capital gains tax. Any publication devoid of main and second home addresses will keep the public transfixed by trivia: Keith Vaz charging the taxpayer for his wheelie bin collections, MPs’ ordering videos of themselves speaking on the floor, Gordon Brown’s blocked toilet, etc. The High Court judges ruled that publication of addresses was necessary to ensure the system was not abused and that ‘there was a legitimate public interest well capable of providing such justification’. The Committee needs to deal with MPs’ successful attempt to circumvent this High Court ruling. If full addresses are not published then at least the first section of a postcode could be disclosed for accountability purposes.

Expectation of privacy
Wherever a public official claims public money in the course of their public duties there should be no expectation of privacy but rather an expectation to account for that spending directly to the public.

Parliamentary Standards Authority
I have grave concerns about the Government’s proposed Parliamentary Standards Authority. This government has a habit of proposing more bureaucracy and legislation as the solution to any and all problems. Often it only creates more. Just because Harriet Harman says the Parliamentary Standards Authority will be independent is no reason to assume that will be the case. No new laws or bureaucracies should be created without all the details being known, published and debated. Listening to her testimony at the committee I found these details to be in short supply. It is not right that those with power are continually given the benefit of all doubt while those without power are increasingly not trusted to do anything without supervision by the state. More information must be published before any substantial expenditure of funds is made to create a new bureaucracy.

It is disingenuous for MPs’ to place the blame for the scandal solely on the Fees Office. The Green Book made clear that the final decision on expense claims rested entirely with individual MPs and all MPs had to sign their claim forms: “I confirm that I incurred these costs wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to stay overnight away from my only or main home for the purpose of performing my duties as a Member of parliament.”

The problem wasn’t so much the Fees Office but the total lack of transparency and direct accountability. That is not going to change with the creation of a new bureaucracy. Isn’t it odd that it was only in the Information Tribunal hearing February 2008 that I finally discovered how the expense system worked and that the man in charge was Andrew Walker? For some reason this basic information was kept under wraps. Why are people’s names and responsibilities a state secret? This is perhaps the single biggest problem affecting efficiency and civic engagement in the UK. Citizens have no clue as to who is responsible for what. I believe this wall of faceless bureaucratic anonymity is there on purpose to keep the people ignorant and unable to meaningfully challenge those in power.

Conclusion
Any new system must have clear lines of authority. We must know by name who is responsible for what. And by this I don’t mean which minister but the name of the actual person doing the job. We don’t need more layers of bureaucracy. The most efficient way to keep politicians’ claims within acceptable limits is for the receipts to be directly available to constituents. This is how it was done in Washington state back in 1992. There, the receipts were a public record and anyone could go and have a look. It was this knowledge that I believe made politicians think very carefully about what they claimed on expenses. They very much understood it was not their money and because of transparency and direct accountability their claims were all above board. The public should be able to see expense data for themselves.

This brings me to the core problem of the culture in parliament. It is a culture that shows deep disrespect and distrust for the common person, the general public, the masses. We can’t pretend to be a democracy when we have this elitist mindset that the public can’t be trusted. When I heard Harriet Harman say ‘trust me’ about the creation of the Parliamentary Standards Authority what I thought was that she wants us to trust her even while she doesn’t trust us, the constituents, to view these receipts.

I understand this fear. It’s not irrational to fear the unthinking mob. But the best way to counter this danger is to ensure the electorate are educated and informed. That is why it is so ironic that such efforts have been made by politicians to keep the people uninformed and ignorant.

What must be kept in mind is that it is the people who gave MPs their power and so it must be to the people to whom they are accountable: directly and forthrightly – with no middlemen in between.

With his wife, Ann, the couple are known as ‘Mr and Mrs Expenses’ for using £175,000 of taxpayers’ money to help buy a flat near Parliament – while they already had a constituency home nine miles away. They claimed more than £300,000 between them last year alone.

Now it seems that flat in Brentford – the couple’s ‘main home’ – has been vacant for so long the council want to repossess it.

It was rather like trying to do a Google search and getting your answers delivered as a truckload of blacked-out telephone directories. The information age may have arrived some decades ago but from the format of yesterday’s publication of MPs’ expenses, Parliament is so last century.

The 700,000 pages of scanned images put online in pdf were described by Sir Stuart Bell as a ‘great achievement’ for Parliament. And I suppose it is if you’re used to inscribing your words on animal skins.

If we truly aim to be an informed electorate then we need quick, direct access to the vast troves of information held not just within Parliament but all other public bodies.

We have moved on from static documents. For information to be useful it should be dynamic, searchable, and accessible. We book our own holidays not through a travel agent but though search engines where we can compare and find the best value flights, hotels and car rentals. We no longer call up librarians with our questions but type them into Google or post them on Twitter. We can compare prices between shops and even between countries. We no longer have to rely on traditional media for our news but can graze for it across the entire globe via the internet and the postings of millions of citizen journalists.

People are used to having great swathes of information at their fingertips, yet parliament still believes it can control both the collection of information and its presentation. Officials want to lock-down documents so they can never be altered without specific written consent. You look at most government websites and the information is micro-managed to an appalling degree. There are a few exceptions – the Electoral Commission website springs to mind – but for the most part, bureaucrats and politicians are loath to allow people direct access to the raw data.

It is this loathing that lies behind officials’ reliance on the pdf document. It is a format that is fixed and static. It cannot be analysed. So we cannot, without a great deal of effort, see how many MPs are funnelling expenses into certain companies or overall food bill. This is why the Guardian set up its own crowd-sourced spreadsheet so the data could be unlocked and made useful. What that means is more taxpayers spending more of their own time and money to fix a system built badly under the instruction of the Commons officials. A better solution would have been to throw open the data from the very beginning and elicit volunteers to help in the publication.

There are no shortage of interested and skilled volunteers. Just look at the number who have helped on the Guardian’s expense website and http://whattheyclaimed.com/. Tom Steinberg and the developers at MySociety have been banging on Parliament’s door for a long time. They built the websites TheyWorkForYou and PublicWhip among others. But it’s always a struggle to get the public sector to release information. I can vouch for that.

It shouldn’t be like this. This is our data. It belongs to us. We paid for it and it was collected in our name. Isn’t it time we had access to it?

The black costs money. It’s the single most expensive part of the operation to publish MPs’ expenses. It took over a year to produce yesterday’s disclosures but the delay and the cost were needless.

The expenses could have simply been put out for inspection in a Commons reading room at little to no cost. That’s how I looked at my local politician’s receipts in America more than 15 years ago. It was that exercise which prompted my five year campaign to bring transparency to parliament and last year I won a High Court victory in which the judges ruled for full disclosure of second homes allowances for a sample of 14 MPs.

The judges allowed for only seven types of sensitive information to be ‘redacted’. The Commons responded by announcing they would publish all MPs’ allowances for the past four years. Those records were scanned in by October 2008 yet numerous publication dates have come and gone. MPs even tried to pass a bill exempting themselves from their own law of transparency. Finally an insider got tired of waiting and leaked the raw data.

Now we’ve seen the censored version and it’s clear the Commons have not abided by the spirit of the High Court ruling. Instead of a presumption of openness they have opted for a presumption of secrecy in which only six types of information are disclosed. The rest are not for our eyes – even though we paid for it.

The censorship is random, inconsistent and unprofessional. It follows one guiding principal: the avoidance of embarrassment. And yet by exhibiting their censoriousness so boldly, MPs’ have only heaped more ridicule upon themselves.

The deletions we know about give the lie to the now-discredited ‘security’ and ‘privacy’ excuses. We see Gordon Brown’s Sky subscription blacked out along with Margaret Beckett’s plants and pergola.

But the blackness is a victory of sorts. It shows the full extent of the Commons censoring operation. I’m sure they would have preferred to drop all the deletions from our notice, pretend they never even existed. This is historically how disclosures are done in Government. The publication of ministers’ diaries for example only tell us what they want us to know. The censoring of the secrets is secret.

All MPs had to approve their documents and the blackness very visibly reflects their real commitment to openness. So we can see that former speaker Michael Martin, who personally blocked my freedom of information requests, has some of the most egregious black outs. He’s gone so far as to black out the name of the council in his council tax bill!

One has to wonder what the officials in the Members’ Estimate Committee were thinking when they decided yet again to try and suppress information clearly in the public interest. They know the Daily Telegraph has a full version of this data so they leave themselves wide open to a cross comparison and no doubt we’ll see a full expose of the secrets of the black boxes in the coming days.

Just who is doing the Commons public relations? Is their remit to bring parliament into as much disrepute as possible? If that’s the case it seems they’ve succeeded.

Promises of more open government have been made before

When it comes to politicians advocating open government the best advice is to ignore what they say and focus on what they do.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown used the dreaded word “transparency”. I have been campaigning for five years on freedom of information and had to go to the High Court to force the disclosure of MPs’ expenses, so it is with some satisfaction that I now hear the Prime Minister issuing statements about the need for open government that I couldn’t have written better myself.

Mr Brown proposed extending the scope of freedom of information. The funny thing is that he suggested this once before, in October 2007. It must have slipped his mind.

Back then, in the first flush of office, he gave a rousing speech on civil liberties. He announced a public consultation about extending coverage of the Freedom of Information Act to institutions that received huge whacks of taxpayers’ cash but had no obligation to be publicly accountable, such as city academies, Network Rail, and private companies providing public services.

The consultation closed in February 2008 and the results were supposed to be implemented no later than November 2008. Need I say that nothing happened? In January I inquired about this phantom consultation. I asked the Ministry of Justice for a copy of the submissions and timelines of progress on implementation. Not getting a straight answer, I filed an FoI request (as I do).

You can guess what happened next. My FoI request about the progress of freedom of information was rejected. The ministry claimed that all the information was exempt as it involved the “formulation of government policy”. So much for Mr Brown’s airy claim that “this is the public’s money. They should know how it is spent.”

Now Mr Brown has put in charge of the FoI reforms one Jack Straw, of the Ministry of Justice, (a department with one of the shoddiest records in answering FoI requests). He is to head a public debate on this secret public consultation. When it comes to making bureaucracies accountable this is the snail’s pace of progress.

How unlike the lightning speed with which new bureaucracies are created. Two were magicked into life just this week: A shiny new department for Peter Mandelson and the ironically-titled Government Democratic Council. I say ironic because in the true spirit of Yes, Minister its creation is shrouded in secrecy. It appears the members will be ministers appointed by the Prime Minister in secret and it’s unclear how transparently they will formulate reforms for a more transparent democracy. Here’s betting it will be behind closed doors.

What’s amazing isn’t just the interest in the story but the way journalists and citizens of those countries immediately start to wonder: ‘What about our politicians? What are they doing with our money?’ And so the campaign for transparency and direct accountability goes global! Even while our House of Commons continues to work behind the scenes to block future disclosures (more on this soon), other countries are moving to greater openness.

Two political parties in New Zealand have announced proactive disclosure regimes for their politicians. Apparently, our scandal has a ring of familiarity for New Zealanders as explained in this article:

…back to 2001 in New Zealand when ministers Phillida Bunkle and Marian Hobbs were put through the wringer over their accommodation allowances, they were both registered as Wellington residents on the electoral roll in Wellington Central where they had contested the 1999 election but were both receiving out-of-towners accommodation allowances.

And in the United States, Congress announced last week that the volume called the Statement of Disbursements will now be published online. The quarterly records show how members of the House and Senate use their personal office funds. This information is already available but previously only in the form of a large paper book. It still contains a good deal more information than MPs are willing to disclose, most notably the names and salaries of their staff.

“It was this Government that introduced the Freedom of Information Act and it is this Government that insisted on the things which caught me on the wrong foot.”

Mr Steen also complained:

“What right does the public have to interfere with my private life? None.”

I am in complete agreement with him on this point. I’ve only ever been interested in how MPs spent taxpayers’ money “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” in connection with their public duties, that their claims were “above reproach”, and of course that they were careful there were “no grounds for a suggestion of misuse of public money”.

I’m sure that Mr Steen took careful note of those Green Book rules when he submitted his claims for rabbit-proofing his country house!

Still, he has certainly shown great insight into the biggest scandal to hit Parliament for decades:

“As far as I am concerned and as of this day I don’t know what the fuss is about.”

Peter Wilson of The Australian newspaper has penned a detailed piece including a few quotes from my good self. And I’ve learnt the pithy Ozzie slang for financial impropriety – a ‘rort’ – which certainly deserves to be picked up over here!

The New York Times rightly describes the whole scandal as flowing from what was originally a ‘modest request’.

It’s great to see the freedom of information angle of the story get picked up in other countries – perhaps this will encourage people around the world to put their politicians and bureaucrats under greater scrutiny!

Is this the apex of my campaign? My 15 minutes of fame might now be coming to a close if the Commons actually comes clean, gets rid of the corrupt and institutes a new transparency regime. That actually looks as though it might now happen.

I’m in such a generous mood I feel I ought to invite Speaker Michael Martin out to lunch just to say ‘thanks for making my career.’ I couldn’t have done this without him.