House of Commons 3rd Reading of the controversial Freedom of Information Act (Amendment) Bill - Ayes: 96 Noes: 25 - what an utter disgrace !
House of Commons 3rd Reading of the controversial Freedom of Information Act (Amendment) Bill:
Ayes: 96 Noes: 25
So this Bill has passed in the House of Commons, to be debated in the House of Lords.
The House of Commons collectively, has now lost even more of its tarnished reputation.
What scandals are Members of Parliament trying to hide from the public ?
The vast majority of the MPs who did vote for this Bill did not take part in the debate, or even bother to listen to it in the Commons Chamber.
Will the House of Lords reject this Bill ?
So much for Prime Minister in waiting Gordon Brown's vague promises about more public transparency and accountability, uttered only last Friday - they have been broken already !
Comments
Is there a list of the MPs who voted in favour?
Posted by: iCowboy | May 18, 2007 5:51 PM
There should be on They Work For You but probably not until tomorrow.
Posted by: Thom | May 18, 2007 5:56 PM
I just found the list of those who voted for the bill on Iain Dale's blog (http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/). They were (and you'll see some familiar faces in amongst them):
Labour
Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East)
Graham Allen (Nottingham North)
Janet Anderson (Rossendale & Darwen)
Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West)
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough)
Clive Betts (Sheffield Attercliffe)
Liz Blackman (Erewash)
Nick Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East & Wallsend)
Colin Burgon (Elmet)
David Cairns (Inverclyde)
Alan Campbell (Tynemouth)
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley)
David Clelland (Tyne Bridge)
Harry Cohen (Leyton & Wanstead)
Wayne David (Caerphilly)
Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester)
Brian Donohoe (Ayrshire Central)
Frank Doran (Aberdeen North)
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West)
Angela Eagle (Wallasey)
Maria Eagle (Liverpool Garston)
Clive Efford (Eltham)
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar & Canning Town)
Caroline Flint (Don Valley)
Michael Foster (Worcester)
Mike Hall (Weaver Vale)
Tom Harris (Glasgow South)
Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne North)
John Heppell (Nottingham East)
Keith Hill (Streatham)
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore)
Kevan Jones (Durham North)
Martyn Jones (Clwyd South)
Fraser Kemp (Houghton & Washington East)
David Lammy (Tottenham)
Bob Laxton (Derby North)
Tom Levitt (High Peak)
Ivan Lewis (Bury South)
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central)
Tommy McAvoy (Rutherglen & Hamilton West)
Stephen McCabe (Birmingham Hall Green)
Ian McCartney (Makerfield)
John McFall (Dunbartonshire West)
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes)
Tony McNulty (Harrow East)
Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr)
David Marshall (Glasgow East)
Gillian Merron (Lincoln)
Alun Michael (Cardiff South & Penarth)
Laura Moffatt (Crawley)
Elliot Morley (Scunthorpe)
George Mudie (Leeds East)
Meg Munn (Sheffield Heeley)
Denis Murphy (Wansbeck)
James Plaskitt (Warwick & Leamington)
Stephen Pound (Ealing North)
Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton North East)
John Robertson (Glasgow North West)
Frank Roy (Motherwell & Wishaw)
Joan Ryan (Enfield North)
Martin Salter (Reading West)
Jonathan Shaw (Chatham & Aylesford)
Jimmy Sheridan (Paisley & Renfrewshire North)
Sion Simon (Birmingham Erdington)
Angela C Smith (Sheffield Hillsborough)
Anne Snelgrove (Swindon South)
John Spellar (Warley)
Ian Stewart (Eccles)
Mark Tami (Alyn & Deeside)
Dari Taylor (Stockton South)
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West)
Dr Desmond Turner (Brighton Kemptown)
Claire Ward (Watford)
Tom Watson (West Bromwich East)
Dave Watts (St Helens North)
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North)
Phil Woolas (Oldham East & Saddleworth)
David Wright (Telford)
Tellers for the Ayes were Tory Tim Boswell (Daventry) and Labour's Andrew Dismore (Hendon).
Posted by: iCowboy | May 18, 2007 11:38 PM
The vote breakdown:
Ayes
Labour 78
Conservative 18
Noes
Liberal Democrat 9
Labour 9
Conservative 5
Plaid Cymru 1
Respect 1
Posted by: Doctor_Wibble | May 18, 2007 11:47 PM
And we were expecting what else, exactly?
Posted by: Mike | May 19, 2007 8:49 AM
I think the unspoken message here is that the govt is preparing to gut the Data protection Act in pursuit of its public service reform agenda, and MPs are just making sure their own arses are covered beforehand.
Posted by: Paul | May 19, 2007 10:31 AM
We're having some fun and games with the FOIA as we try to extract information from the MHRA and Department of Health. The Act itself was a sham, as far as I can make out: there's a cash limit on FOIA requests (£600 in any 2-month period, if my memory serves me), and at £25 an hour, it doesn't take long to get there, particularly if one encounters people who don't appear to understand the questions asked, deliberately, or otherwise.
If one is asking detailed technical questions, it's all the easier for those responding to engage in evasive obfuscation, and the 24 hours allotted to researching requests runs out quickly. Additionally, there's a twenty (working) day lead time on replies. Irritating, but not insurmountable. The question put rarely gets answered, and beware of asking too many questions in one hit: several will usually be ignored, or only answered in a cursory fashion.
Best regards
Matt
Posted by: Matthew Holford | May 22, 2007 12:02 AM
@ Matthew - you can peruse our various FOIA Requests and Appeals at:
http://SpyBlog.org.uk/foia
Posted by: wtwu | May 22, 2007 12:59 AM
PublicWhip now have their analyses of the various votes on this wretched Bill last Friday 18th may 2007 at:
13:46 Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading
13:46 Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading — Closure
11:30 Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Section 1(3)
11:30 Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Removal of Section 1(3)
10:15 Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Amendment — Proposed
09:33 Motion to sit in private
Posted by: wtwu | May 22, 2007 1:08 AM
Hey,
Yes, that looks very familiar. I haven't had "it's in the public interest that we don't disclose that, yet," but perhaps that's a matter of how pressured the MHRA feels. I would be amused to have them use that one, though, seeing as the public interest is served by knowing how the MHRA is serving the public interest!
If I get the time, I'm going to make a list of all the excuses that public entities may deploy, in order to "legitimately" refuse to provide information. I suspect that it amounts almost complete silence.
Matt
Posted by: Matthew Holford | May 27, 2007 11:37 AM