Council tax bands redacted
Over the weekend, the Telegraph produced some new revelations about numerous MPs who, according to the newspaper, had over-claimed for their council tax.
This story makes more interesting another aspect of how the Commons blacked out expenses information which would seem to have no obvious implications for the security of MPs.
From the examples I've looked at, the Commons authorities have redacted the council tax valuation bands for MPs' second homes. Yet this data was disclosed in the material already officially released last year for the 14 MPs subject to a specific FOI request.
Thus, here is a council tax bill for John Prescott as disclosed last week:
And here is the version released in May 2008:
Similarly, it was disclosed last year that William Hague's flat in Westminster was in band H, while Sir Menzies Campbell's Westminster flat was band C and Mark Oaten's Lambeth flat was band B - but this information was redacted in the material published last week.
(Just to be clear, none of these four MPs was named by the Telegraph as among the dozens who it said had over-claimed for council tax).
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Ironic is it not that my previous post has been referred to the moderators, Martins post talks about MPs redacting their expense claims, and I find my post redacted, this on a blog which is called 'Open Secrets'.
Nothing in my original post broke BBC blog rules, what a shame that the person who referred my post was not big enough to debate on this blog what they found so upsetting about my comment.
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The redaction of the band letter is nonsensical as it can be discovered from other data given. all the information regarding the dates the bill refers to, council and actual amount of the bill are provided, anyone living in that council that kept the papers that came with their old bills can soon see which band the property falls in. If you dont have your own old bill the data might be found on the internet, else an FOI to the council would reveal it.
I suspect the reason for redacting is so that no one compiles a nice little list of which MP lives in what banding and goes on to suggest that no one be able to claim any higher than an A or B.
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