Details of MPs' expenses could still be exempted from FoI Act

Both Labour and the Conservatives decline to rule out a future move to keep some aspects of MPs' claims secret

• David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 January 2009 16.39 GMT
• Article history

Labour and the Tories left the door open today for a future move to exempt the full details of MPs expenses from the Freedom of InformationAct.

Gordon Brown waImage via Wikipedias yesterday forced to withdraw plans to keep details of individual spending secret after the Conservatives made a late decision not to back the plans. In a debate today, Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, repeatedly declined to rule out new restrictions in the future, while Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the house, indicated that if new measures to strengthen audits of MPs' claims worked, he might be in favour of dropping the call for the release of every receipt over £25.

Harman's silence on the issue came as she confirmed that 1.2m receipts detailing MPs' expenses going back to 2004 would be published once they had been processed by House of Commons authorities, at a cost of £2m.

She told MPs: "The house authorities will comply with all the requests that they have and I think there are some 180 in the pipeline."

But individual receipts would not form part of a new regime for MPs' expenses, which Harman said would prevent abuse and assure constituents that "public money is being properly spent".

Image by Steve Punter via FlickrHer proposals, agreed by the Commons yesterday, extend the automatic reporting of MPs' expenses from 14 to 26 categories, including revealing for the first time the annual cost of rent and mortgage interest payments on MPs' second homes.

There will also be an updated version of the Green Book, which sets out rules for claiming expenses, a requirement for MPs to be subject to a "robust independent audit", and a new committee on members' allowances, which will meet in public and have an opposition majority.

She said full disclosure might continue to happen, particularly if journalists and the public continued to put in FoI requests, which would mean that all 646 MPs would have to disclose information at that level.

"We are not bound to do just the minimum of what we think the law requires.

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