MPs: The missing information
Now the Commons has released the official data on MPs' expenses, much of the focus will actually be on what they still haven't released - the information which has been blacked out or "redacted".
While this event may be the culmination of the official process started by FOI requests made over four years ago in January 2009 2005, it's unlikely that FOI campaigners will be satisfied by today's disclosures. They are more likely to complain about the redactions.
Since the Telegraph has the full set of leaked data, it is best placed to draw attention to the discrepancies. It will doubtless do so.
Yet it's already clear from information that the BBC possesses that some of the redactions seem peculiar and go beyond security considerations such as home addresses and signatures.
For example, in today's material about Gordon Brown's expenses, the Commons has redacted the fact that some bills were for Sky Television.
How do I know this? Not because of a leak - but because fuller details of his expense returns have already been officially released by the Commons in response to another FOI request in May last year.
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There seems to be a time warp in this post... "four years ago in January 2009"...
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I think Martin means the official process started in Jan 2009 as a result of the FOI requests made 4 years ago...
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I meant to say "four years ago in January 2005" (which was when the first FOI requests for MPs' expenses were made).
Thanks for pointing out the error.
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Great.... all I found was black boxes
So this this the government be transparent?????
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The whistleblower and the Telegraph were heavily criticised for revealing the MPs expenses debacle, the Government stating that the information was to be released in June anyway. Well today it was released with so much blacking out that the truth would never have been revealed. What scum these MPs really are.
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As all (most?) MPs protest that there expense claims are within the "Rules", is it also within the same "Rules" that they may black out crucial information?
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the published details are of little use and that was obviously the intention until the Daily Telegraph came along and blew them out of the water.... One question i do have which i have not seen answered..why do the likes of Brown and Darling have second home allowances when they do not have a first home given that they live in grace and favour apartments?
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You haven't made it clear exactly who is believed to be responsible for the blacked-out portions.
It can't be the case that individual MPs are responsible for choosing which bits to redact - so who does choose?
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The following is the account of the last poor soul that dared question the blacked out area on MPs expenses: -
The Poltergeist of Downing Street
Number 10, the seat of power, will chill the blood and make you cower.
Venture inside at the witching hour, a ghastly howl then a pottery shower.
Shards of glass, the crack of bone, mind your head its a mobile phone!
Make sure youre never left alone, duck again as a printers thrown!
From every nook is hurled abuse, hands in the air but there is no truce!
A hurtling book, theres no excuse, hit square in the jaw, a tooth is loose!
Calm down beast! This isnt fair! Then dive for cover from a tumbling chair!
What to do? To hide, but where? When Gordos enraged, never go there!
Will you be brave enough to be the next to enter ---- 10 DOWNING STEET ---- Muaahahahaha ...
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I am amazed how we the British public can elect a body and allow them to set their own pay and conditions because they call themselves honourable D Cameron with his mortgage G Brown with his sky some who claim for a bath plug or try and claim for a duck house they are all dishonourable acts The money they have spent trying to hide their acts and all the black marks on their receipts in my mind a large majority of them should be banned at the next election
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The worrying thing is I had an email reply to my complaint to the MET saying that they did not think they will be able to bring any prosecutions. The whole system is corrupt and they just run the system for their own ends. It is way past time the UK had an elected president with a fully elected set of MPs and no un elected 2nd chamber - real demmocracy.
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It is OK to redacte the singatures, as long as we know the names of expense claimants.
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We need to see some of "the authorities" and the ministers like Harriet Harman who pull their strings in court under charges of contempt. On the R4 PM programme yesterday someone said that the court had stated specifically that addresses should be published. That aside, how can they redact information like GB's Sky claim without being in contempt. Dates, comments, all sorts of information has be blacked out.
Maybe the judges don't feel the contempt of this cynical cover-up but Labour's contempt of the public is clear for all to see.
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I haven't spent much time analysing all this data, but did notice that on GB's gardening expense claim the gardener's hours worked and hourly rate had been blanked out...why? Just leads me to think the hourly rate may be excessive, which leds me to query who is the gardener - a relative or friend perhaps, being paid inflated amounts by the taxpayer?
Not significant in relation to second homes issues etc but blanking out this innocuous information makes me suspicious that all is not above board here.
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Some of the blocking out seems a bit desperate. The name is given of a printer for a pile of leaflets for my MP, but its address is blocked out. Five seconds of Googling revealled that the leaflets were printed in another country (let alone county) to the one which he represents. This is odd - why are they so shy?
Are the people behind this blocking out block-heads?
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It seems that the MPs (inc Mr G Brown) are still fighting a rearguard action to keep the money claimed secret. In my work, a false or incorrect claim is viewed as fraud and I'm not able to smile, say it was just a mistake and agree to pay it back. There appears to be a two-tier degree of punishment for that that Brown likes and those he doesn't. For those in the inner circle a stony silence and (eventually) the public will forget the misdeeds - trouble is they're right - we have short memories...
The expenses and employment of family members is just milking the system. All posts claimed for should be open to full public scrutiny and any jobs offered advertised for PUBLIC competition. If they choose a family member then they need to be able to justify it - with reason!
The public anger is not just that these people think themselves beyond such moral behavior but that there is nothing that the public can do about it. Generally MPs are selected by the local party activists from a selection supplied from Labour/Tory central and are probably not local. Once we have elected them in then their actions are not subject to any control other than from party - certainly not pre-election promises. The public feel powerless and have to wait another 5 years for a chance to react. In the meantime the MPs are, I think, more driven by the political lobby than local voters plus "members interests".
Although we, the voters get quoted, MPs largely live remotely in London and only remember us when the 5-year are almost up.
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Leading by example.
There is milking the system and there is blatant dishonesty. A government which keeps telling us we are all on the database, being watched, about to be on ID cards and DNA databases in order to control our lives more and more can't be surprised when we want to know about them.
If only they applied some of the rules they set for others to themselves they might go some way towards gaining our respect.
Copied from the DWP Website:
How the government is tackling benefit theft
Other things the government is doing to stamp out benefit theft include:
setting standards for checking Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit claims and giving Local Authorities access to government information
requiring more evidence when people apply for a National Insurance number or claim benefits
cross checking benefit and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) records to find benefit cheats.
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So who paid for the masses of black ink that was used to cover up the majority of these documents?
My guess would be the taxpayer.
It shouldn't be down to the MPs to decide what to cover up, the reason we're in this mess is because they run themselves and here we are not learning from past mistakes.
It should have been down to an independent body to decide what should be blacked out but instead of honesty, openness and transparency, we end up with more of the same from our untrustworthy representatives.
I looked over some of it only to find there was so much blacked out I struggled to make any sense of anything. The way I see it, Parliament sees Freedom of Information as freely deciding what information to keep from the public (much like our PM's original decision to hold the investigation in private).
Parliament don't see themselves as Parliament, which is the biggest problem here, they see themselves as a ruling elite who can take advantage of anything to suit themselves because the people are nothing more than the ruled. That's why the information of every single person in this country is probably on multiple government databases, why they continue to create more databases to put more of our information on and why the government feel the need to monitor everything we do. It seems that it's clearly the general public who are the trouble makers in society according to the attitudes shown by Parliament and they're all perfect angels living in their happy paradise where everything they do is considered normal acceptable behaviour that's within the rules.
Compared to the average person of the general public, it's Parliament who are the trouble makers and who set the lowest standards of all in their behaviour and attitudes.
Parliament was right when it agreed that change was needed but why is it down to the corrupt politicians to create change when their ideas of change are far different to the ideas held by the public.
I have a voice and I want change.
And to finish it off, I know that the politicians will never acknowledge such words about change from the public because they see us as inept, which is why the government also need to track everything we do. I'm sure they'd have a representative stating that without the government people wouldn't know how to breathe and therefore, it's within our interests to have politicians like them leading our country because sensible people with qualities such as honesty and integrity are clearly unqualified for the task of serving the public interest as effectively as the corrupt and selfish politicians currently in charge.
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See me n Gordie we can see through the black ink. Or do I mean I can see through Gordie?
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What I've never quite understood is why more fuss isn't made about Gordon Brown's flipping of his second home. I've read about it in The Telegraph- his London flat, his Fife house and of course his residence as Chancellor. Someone said the flat was now in his wife's name. So why so silent, BBC? Don't we actually require this information to be highlighted and never mind the Sky subscription.
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My view? This is the final piece of the puzzle... proof that MPs (not officials!) have tried to withold evidence, which could have been used in a court of law, that fraud has taken place on a massive scale over an extended period of time by MPs!
Now I suggest that the appropriate police services stop sitting on their hands and start deploying The Fraud Act 2006 which came into force in january 2007 to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to book!
INVESTIGATE all MPs, irrespective of political party and seniority!
PROSECUTE all those who have committed fraud, irrespective of political party and seniority!
SENTENCE those found guilty, irrespective of political party and seniority!
As a taxpaying citizen, and one of the millions of victims of these frauds, I expect to hear the slamming of cell doors behind the guilty!
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14. At 09:10am on 19 Jun 2009, yukapataya wrote:
I haven't spent much time analysing all this data, but did notice that on GB's gardening expense claim the gardener's hours worked and hourly rate had been blanked out...why? Just leads me to think the hourly rate may be excessive, which leds me to query who is the gardener - a relative or friend perhaps, being paid inflated amounts by the taxpayer?
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Oh yee of suspicious minds - alternatively the gardener thinking to use GB using him as PR gave GB a lower rate than his other customers. Gordy got a good deal for the taxpayer and if published the gardeners other customers no doubt would be a bit peeved that they were paying more for the services of the prime ministers gardener.
Point is that as it is redacted we cannot tell which version is closer to truth so invent our own speculation (truth probably lies somewhere in between). Redacted they are mostly pointless and meaningless but I suspect that even completely unredacted they would be virtually meaningless - certainly for the older claims where receipts were an optional extra.
Most of the most heavily reviled and criticised MPs are those who were stupid enough to attach receipts or explanations even when they were not required under the rules (of the time) to do so.
Those who submitted no receipts have largely escaped scrutiny or approbrium because there is nothing to scrutinise.
Much of the most heinous claiming would not have been apparent to the public just from viewing the claims unredacted. You have to do further research to find out who has a mortgage and who hasn't for example.
This frankly is the job of the fees office to check and ensure that the claims are correct and to demand proof - this office and its staff need the boot and replacement with independent body (not PWC or consultants - they just tell you what you want to hear), how about a member/s of the public picked at random as with Jury service to review and validate. We trust peoples liberty to jury , why not the expenses which are far less important.
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Redacted? What's wrong with 'censored'? As my mum used to say "Redacted? I'll give you redacted..."
I blame the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Brown.
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Nobody seems to be criticising the Commons Fee Office. If an MP is claiming for mortgage interest or council tax etc then there should have been evidence. Paying a claim without evidence must be wrong and amounts to miss handling of public money. The police should be looking it this too.
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A nice, concise, piece Martin, about how the FOI works in practice.
Surely the point to be made here is that the only way to keep MPs expenses honest is if they believe that any fraud that they perpetrate will be found out.
It is the fear of being caught that we need.
As an aside, Martin, would you use a FOI request to find out what MPs actually spend their generous salaries on?
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Thanks for all your comments.
thomasak001: Asks how can the Commons redact information so widely without being in contempt of last year's court decision forcing disclosure of MPs' expenses. The Commons did comply with that decision last year, which only concerned 14 MPs, by releasing all the data about them, including addresses for example. Parliament has since changed the Freedom of Information Act so that there is now no obligation to reveal MPs' addresses and other material which it is said could imperil their security. (It is not obvious how this can extend to the model number of a dishwasher).
jfpollard: Complains that the Commons Fees Office is escaping without criticism. One of the things I've found interesting from the Telegraph's coverage is the apparent inconsistency of attitudes adopted by the Fees Office. In some cases they clearly did battle with MPs to reduce their claims; in other cases they clearly encouraged MPs to put in dubious claims for well in excess of the MPs' intentions. This may reflect different approaches from different staff in the office. I've been told that some junior staff there sometimes felt that their superiors did not support them properly when they were trying to cut back an MP's claim.
splendidhashbrowns: Asks if you could you use an FOI request to find out what MPs actually spend their salaries on. The answer is no. The information about the money they claim for expenses from the House of Commons is held by the administration of Parliament and is subject to FOI because Parliament is. Individual MPs do not come under the Freedom of Information Act, and in any case what they spend their personal salaries on would generally be private information as it would be for any other public official.
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