Heath and Swinson on MPs' expenses

10.18.08am GMT Sat 24th Jan 2009

• [Jan 22]: ' . . IT is unfortunate that the impression has been given that, somehow, it was sufficiently unclear that it was all right to have blatantly fiddled the system, as, sadly, one or two Members appear to have done.

• David Heath (Somerton & Frome, Liberal Democrat; Shadow Leader of the House): I begin by saying that Mr. Kidney, who is not in his place at the moment, made a very important point to the Leader of the House in his intervention. The system that we have been working with may have its inadequacies, but all hon. Members who submit a claim sign a certificate to the effect that they have used the money for a purpose that is consistent with their parliamentary duties. I agree with the hon. Gentleman in that I cannot understand how people can get away with using that money for a purpose that is wholly inconsistent with their parliamentary duties. How can it be said that there is something unclear about the certification that we all sign each time we claim? It is unfortunate that the impression has been given that, somehow, it was sufficiently unclear that it was all right to have blatantly fiddled the system, as, sadly, one or two Members appear to have done.

Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the faults has been that we have not had a system of audit that goes beyond the signature and allows proper scrutiny, simply as a check that hon. Members are behaving in accordance with what they have signed for? That is the great strength of the improved arrangements that are being put in place today. As a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I think it important, as my hon. Friend Alan Duncan was saying from the Front Bench, that we should uphold the highest principles-in fact, the seven principles that Lord Nolan proposed-and the new audit arrangements are a step in the right direction.

• David Heath: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he will know-because he used to be my sparring partner on these issues for many years-how often I have said that we need better and essentially external audit of what is done in the House. I am therefore very pleased that that is part of the proposals today.

The Leader of the House suggested in the earlier exchanges that we do not want to get into a Dutch auction between the parties on who is holier than thou, and I absolutely agree. It is important that we as a House come together on the issue and find a way forward that does not try to divide us into different camps, nor enable any portion of the House to claim a specific sanctimony all its own, as that is unhelpful to the process of finding the right solution.

I want to spend a little time on the Freedom of Information Act statutory instrument. It has been withdrawn, but it is extremely cogent to the proposed scheme of publication. I wholly welcome the withdrawal of the statutory instrument. I always intended to oppose it, as I have always opposed such matters. The one party political point that I want to make-I hope it is not at the expense of others-is simply that I was very saddened by the spin coming from those who speak for No. 10, who suggested yesterday that the statutory instrument was based on what was called an all-party agreement. It was categorically not based on an all-party agreement. The Liberal Democrats were neither asked the question, nor did we agree to it. I see the Leader of the House nodding on that point. It is thus wholly incorrect to suggest that we would support such an exemption for Members of Parliament.

Harriet Harman: I had not planned to intervene, because I spoke for so long; but to put the record straight, I never said "all-party support". I said that I understood that we had the support of the official Opposition. Of course, a Liberal Democrat Member served on the Members Estimate Committee, so was aware of what we were planning, but I have never taken that to be assent from the hon. Gentleman's party or ever claimed that.

• David Heath: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for clarifying that. She was absolutely correct in what she said, as was the Prime Minister in what he said from the Dispatch Box yesterday, but it was spun a different way later, which is unfortunate.

If we had been asked, we would have said no, because we do not believe that the House should be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act on this matter. We have always argued that that Act should not be diluted. The first Committee on which I ever served in the House was the one that considered the Freedom of Information Bill, and we argued then that the Bill was a diluted form of the excellent White Paper, produced by Lord Clark of Windermere when he was in government, on which it was based. It was diluted again in the Standing Committee and when it returned to the Chamber. Ever since, there have been attempts, notably by David Maclean, to dilute it again. If we keep on diluting the Freedom of Information Act, we get to a point where it is positively homeopathic in its dilution-it no longer has the effect that we want it to have-and that is something that we should oppose, and my hon. Friends will certainly do so.

• Mark Hunter (Cheadle, Liberal Democrat): Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, despite several attempts to get an assurance from the Leader of the House that the Government will not seek to exempt MPs from freedom of information legislation on any future occasion, she was evidently unable to provide such a categorical assurance to the House today? Does he also share the concern that the only conclusion we can draw from that is that, despite what is being said today, there may yet be further occasions when the Government will seek, once again, to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act? We are seeking to defend an important principle.

• David Heath: I agree with my hon. Friend that the principle is important-it is one of the three principles that I am about to set out-and I was disappointed that the Leader of the House was not able to give that categorical assurance, because it would have been helpful to the House, particularly to those hon. Members who felt that we were going in entirely the wrong direction in trying to disapply the freedom of information provisions to ourselves.

Julian Lewis (Shadow Minister, Defence; New Forest East, Conservative): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• David Heath: I will give way in a moment; I am about to set out the three very important principles that we should abide by in this respect.

Frank Field (Birkenhead, Labour): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• David Heath: I have just indicated that I am about to set out three principles, so it would not be helpful for me to take an intervention just at that point.

The first principle is that the concept of freedom of information applies to Members of Parliament as much as to anyone else in the public services. That is non-negotiable. The second principle is that the public have a right to know how public money is spent. Again, that is a key principle. The third principle is almost a reverse of the second in some ways: MPs should get the expenses that they need to do the job they are asked to do on behalf of the public and the community that they service-not a penny more, not a penny less. We should be prepared to defend the provision of those expenses. No one else would call them "expenses"; they are the running costs involved in being a Member, and we should not be defensive or ashamed about that. That is what is necessary to do the job that we do in the House.

Julian Lewis (Shadow Minister, Defence; New Forest East, Conservative): I warmly welcome the non-partisan way in which the hon. Gentleman is approaching the subject, but on never diluting the Freedom of Information Act and never making an exception, may I remind him of the important point that was made by the Leader of the House? An exemption to the Act was made in respect of MPs because of the insane decision by the High Court that our home addresses should be published. I must remind him that, quite rightly, at least half of his parliamentary party signed up to that and that not one Member chose to divide the House on it. So that is why it is perfectly reasonable for the Leader of the House not to give a blanket commitment never do that again, whatever the circumstances. When the Act was originally passed, no one in their wildest dreams would have imagined that the High Court would be mad enough to suggest that our home addresses should be published en masse on the internet for the benefit of any trouble maker at home or terrorist abroad.

Alan Haselhurst (Deputy Speaker): Order. May I plead for interventions to be the standard length? I have been very flexible about it this afternoon, but they are tending to become mini speeches.

• David Heath: I am most grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The interventions have been rather longer than the small interludes in between, when I have been speaking.

The hon. Gentleman makes a point. He knows, I think, that I did not agree with him on that-others did-and I made it clear that I did not. There must be very specific and particular security reasons for non-publication. Everyone knows where I live in my constituency. That is published in the phone directory, and I make no secret of it. But there are specific reasons for specific Members where that is not the case.

Gordon Prentice (Pendle, Labour): On the issue of not a penny more, not a penny less, may I return to the question that I put to Alan Duncan? Should any capital gain arise from the ownership of a London property, should it be paid to the Treasury? If there were a loss subsequently, the Treasury could pay the Member who had lost out.

• David Heath: I do not think that there should be personal gain; that is my view. Actually, I would go further than that, and when we considered the review, I made a recommendation. Years ago, we arrived at the wrong system when we decided that people could buy properties and reclaim the mortgage. I know that there are contrary views on the issue. Some say, "Well, actually, that has been a saving to the taxpayer," but the situation would be much clearer if we identified a place to live and the rental was paid directly by the House. Then there would not be any question of people buying furniture and acquiring gain from their property. However, that is not the system, and I do not criticise any Member for abiding by the current rules, because that is what is set out.

It is wrong to suggest that when somebody has used the current allowances to buy a property, and then has to put furniture in it-shock, horror, they need some furniture!-it is somehow a scandalous waste of public money. That does not make sense. One must use either one system or another. We cannot have a system and then criticise those who use it in a perfectly sensible and sober way.

Frank Field (Birkenhead, Labour): I want to come back to the substantive point that we are discussing today. It is not a general point about the Freedom of Information Act and how it operates; the issue is how it operates specifically with regard to our expenses. Is it not true that however the Government wish to present those expenses, our constituents will be able to find out what we have spent and how we have spent it?

• David Heath: That moves me neatly on to what I was going to say next. My difficulty with the proposals before us is the relationship between the scheme of publication that has been suggested, which has many admirable qualities, and extant freedom of information requests and decisions of the tribunal and the High Court, which cannot just be wished away; they exist. The tragedy is that if the House had used its brain a little more three or four years ago when the issues started cropping up, and had realised then that the need to respond to the public interest meant having a proper scheme of publication and a proper audit system, I think that would have satisfied the Information Commissioner. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that it would. Then we would not have had many of the discussions that we have had in the past few days. The tragedy is that those who did not want to disclose anything have ended up having to disclose everything because they could not see the way the wind was blowing. I hope that that is a lesson to Members of the House: when the public have a legitimate right to know something, trying to keep it secret beyond the point at which that is tenable is a very bad tactic, quite part from anything else, because the result will not be what they expect it to be.

Simon Hughes (North Southwark & Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat): My hon. Friend has given us wise words. Does he not agree that the conclusion of what he says is that a simple pair of messages must come from the House? The first is that we will comply with the law that applies to everybody else, and secondly, we will make available to the public all the information about the money that they give us and how it is spent?

• David Heath: That must be the case. That brings me to my difficulty with what the Leader of the House is saying. She has brought forward a scheme which, as I say, has many admirable qualities, but the problem is that it has been trumped by the decision of the High Court, following the tribunal decision. If an application were made, but the House decided not to comply with that application, and the case went before the Information Commissioner and was appealed to the tribunal, before going to the High Court, it may well be that a different view would be taken on the basis of the scheme before us today. However, that is by no means certain.

The right hon. and learned Lady is saying, "We shall have to decide, once the measures are in place, whether we want to continue releasing information down to receipt level, in accordance with the Court judgment." We are deciding not to do that, under the measures that we are debating today, because the scheme of publication does not allow for that. It would be perverse to have two schemes of publication-one by category, and the other down to receipt level-operating in parallel. That is my difficulty. There is no resolution of that problem at the moment; it will depend on how the House decides to proceed. However, I think that we are getting ourselves into another mess.

I am assuming that the House authorities will now release all the redacted information that they have been working so assiduously to produce, and have spent £2 million on preparing. If they do not, I have to say that if I were a person who had an FOI application in place, I would be rushing to the High Court to try to get a mandatory injunction to ensure that the House complied. I am not sure whether the House would have its assets sequestered as a result, but that would be an interesting constitutional outcome. It is now clear that the House has to comply with the request, and I inferred from what the Leader of the House said that it was the intention to do so in the very near future.

• Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• David Heath: Well, yes.

• Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, albeit slightly unenthusiastically. The amendment that my hon. Friend Dr. Whitehead tabled was designed to ensure that information down to receipt level was available, if necessary. We are not allowed to speculate in detail on why it was not selected, but I believe that the reason is that its provisions are covered by the intention of the House. I would certainly be disappointed if that were not the case.

• David Heath: There have been several expressions of disappointment about the fact that the amendment was not selected, but the issue is not in my hands. The inevitable result of the situation that will pertain by the end of the debate, provided that we go ahead with the proposals, is that we will have the scheme of delegation, but it will be superseded by the fact that we are required, under a current ruling, and until an alternative ruling is in place, to provide information down to receipt level. That is the position that the House is in, and it should be aware of that. Given that, the Leader of the House may like to consult her colleagues to see whether there are more sensible alternatives to the method of redaction being used. There are various ways of achieving the same result. The first is redaction at source-

Harriet Harman: In future?

• David Heath: Yes, I am talking about the future. We could invite Members to go through a redacting process at source, before they hand in the receipt, to make sure that it does not contain certain things. There is also the "blank sheet" proposal, in which hon. Members would transfer the information from the receipt on to a standard form, which provides the information that is properly released. It is that form that is submitted, but it is of course backed up by a receipt, which is open to audit by the auditors. Both those systems would be much cheaper than what takes place at the moment, and would have fewer implications for the staff of the House. I hope that we will consider that.

The changes in the Green Book do not necessarily go as far as I would like, but they accurately reflect the decisions of the House. A good job has been done in translating the decisions of the House into the new regulations. As I say, it is not the Green Book that I would have written, but I nevertheless think the House should support it. I have already spoken about external audit: it is the most important element of the package before us today, because until there is an audit people can trust of how we run the mini-businesses that are our offices, they will not accept our word that we have done it properly.

That brings me to the point on which I want to finish. Surely the lesson from the whole affair is that we constantly need to step outside this place and look at ourselves as others see us, rather than thinking about our concerns and the potential for embarrassment or difficulties, which is undoubtedly there. We know that the press will make mischief out of almost anything that we do. There will be people who will deeply regret the publication of their expenses claims because they will have them splashed all over the papers, and upsetting and misleading statements will be made about how spendthrift they are. That will happen. It is regrettable, and one would hope that it would not, but it will. At the same time, surely we ought to see our behaviour as the outside world sees it. One of the great sadnesses of the proposal that was on the Order Paper until yesterday was that what the outside world saw was our hiding from the public who pay our wages, and that is not right. I hope that we will not do so again.

• . . Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire, Liberal Democrat): I welcome the debate today and the generally constructive tone. I welcome the helpful proposals to improve accountability for our expenses and I especially welcome the withdrawal of the proposal to exempt Members of Parliament from freedom of information legislation.

I was very taken with the contribution of my hon. Friend Mr. Heath, especially his call for us "to see ourselves as others see us." He may not know that that is a quote from a poem by Robert Burns, and it is all the more appropriate given that we will celebrate Burns night on Sunday. We should hold on to that pearl of wisdom throughout the debate.

We must admit that we have a problem with public perception. Survey after survey shows that members of the public tend to have a positive view of their Member of Parliament, but that their view of us collectively, as a breed of politicians, is much more negative. That is where many of the problems lie. The subject of Members' expenses has fuelled the negative perception. As has been said, it has been a vexed issue for many years.

It does not help that our expenses system is so poorly understood, and that the media have been less than helpful in sensationalising expenses. Indeed, the word "expenses" is misleading because in most jobs-certainly in jobs that I had before being elected-some of the items for which we claim would not necessarily count as expenses. For example, large headline figures of more than £100,000 are produced, but the vast majority of that money is spent on the salaries of our incredibly hard-working staff, who deal with constituents' concerns day in, day out. Constituents greatly appreciate that help and continually give excellent feedback about our staff. Those salaries make up most of our expenses, but what newspaper editor or managing director would include in their expenses the salaries of everybody who worked in their organisation?

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative): The hon. Lady makes a powerful and important point. Does she agree that it is incumbent on us to explain what we, as Members, and the public are getting in return for those staffing budgets? To put it simply, if the sums available were much lower, the delays to constituents would be that much greater. Some of the vexatious complainants about the size of the allowances are precisely the same people who would grumble about the tardiness of our responses.

• Jo Swinson: The hon. Gentleman is right. The service that our staff provide enables us to deal with, for example, the more than 3,000 constituency cases that the Leader of the House mentioned. That figure is not unusual for most Members. From speaking to Members who have been here much longer than me, I know that the volume of correspondence has increased hugely in recent years. Although e-mail is an excellent way in which people can communicate with their Members of Parliament, making communication easier means that the volume of correspondence increases and more support is required to handle the inquiries.

Many of our constituents mistakenly believe that the money comes directly to us and is paid into bank accounts, from which we pay out. We know that money comes directly to us for certain allowances, for example, the allowance for rent, only when we have submitted the claim and the receipt to show that we have already paid. As a new Member, with student debts, I suddenly had to pay deposits and found that cash flow was a bit of a problem in the first two weeks, so that is another misconception.

References to second homes can conjure up an image of a gravy train and of holiday homes, but the reality is that we get out of this place at 10 o'clock or 10.30 on Monday and Tuesday evenings and just about manage to get back to somewhere in London to put our head down and try to get a decent night's sleep before we come back here early the next morning. It is not exactly a glamorous lifestyle.

I absolutely love doing the job of Member of Parliament; it is a great privilege for me to represent the people of East Dunbartonshire. However, all of us in the House know that the job is far from easy. Spending half the week away from loved ones places strains on family life, and the huge amount of travelling takes its toll, resulting in tiredness and exhaustion. I want to make it very clear that, without the support of my excellent staff, without being able to travel regularly between my constituency in Scotland and Westminster, without having somewhere to stay when I am down here in London, and without the resources to pay for my office telephone bills, my stationery and my information technology equipment, I would simply be unable to do the job of representing my constituents properly. That case is not often made, but it needs to be made.

I am in favour of transparency because I believe that, when people are presented with the mundane details of our toner cartridges and our telephone bills, the heat will go out of the issue. In the main, our constituents accept that we need to do our job, and that we need the resources to do it.

John Spellar (Comptroller, HM Household; Warley, Labour): Has that been the experience of the Scottish Parliament? How have the Scottish media treated the matter of its expenses?

• Jo Swinson: I shall come to the issue of the Scottish Parliament in a moment. By and large, that has been the experience there, because, once everything is in the public domain, journalists get a bit bored with trying to write these stories.

Trying to hide the justifiable expenses that we claim in the process of doing our job is damaging the reputation of politics. It is also absolutely pointless. The way in which we are going is clear to see, and to try to hide the information is counterproductive. It fuels the public's negative perception of politicians and of the House.

Ann Cryer (Keighley, Labour): While the hon. Lady has been talking, I have been thinking about this. The seedier end of the press seems to be getting at those of us who are possibly the most diligent, because we use all of our staffing allowance to employ people. As the hon. Lady said, we do not see that money at all. The press will get on to us about that because it does not understand that that money does not pass through our pockets but goes directly to our staff. Also, those of us who go to our constituencies every week-I do, and I think that most of us do-have higher travel costs. If we go by train, our travel costs will perhaps be higher than if we went by car, although we could make a greater profit out of using a car. None of these things is taken into account. Last year, I was told by my local paper that I was the highest-spending MP in Bradford, because my train fares came to more than those of the other four MPs. There were all sorts of reasons for that, and they were only £20 more. So, this year, I have started to use my senior citizen's rail pass to reduce the amount of money that I am using-

Sylvia Heal (Deputy Speaker): Order. Interventions should be brief, and the hon. Lady has certainly made her point.

• Jo Swinson: It was a very good point. At the other end of the spectrum, when I was first elected to the House, I was still able to use my young person's rail card, so my travel bills went up slightly after my first year as a Member of Parliament.

The hon. Lady has made a good point, and transparency should be our friend. We might not be able to guarantee treatment that is always favourable or entirely fair from the media; I cannot promise that we would get such treatment. However, I believe that our constituents will, by and large, treat us fairly. They, at least, will be in a position to be able to assess the situation, if they can see the travel claims and other expenses of the hon. Lady or any other Member. They know how hard their individual MP works, and they will be able to make their own judgment. This is about ensuring that people have the power to make those judgments. They know, from dealing with our staff, that there is always a well-staffed office-and they might be aware that one MP has higher staff costs than another-and they will be able to see the benefits of that. It will be up to our constituents to judge whether we, as MPs, are spending the taxpayer's money well. Transparency, then, is a good principle for us to adopt.

We heard earlier about the 26 categories that will now apply and debated whether every receipt should be published, which will also happen under freedom of information legislation. I accept the argument that perhaps if we had had a better publication regime before, we might not have reached the stage of the Information Commissioner's ruling that every receipt has to be published. But we are where we are, and we are now going to publish detailed receipts-1.2 million of them, as we have heard-so I would argue that it makes no sense to stop there. Once we have done this, we should have a system that enables us to do it on a regular basis, so that it is entirely transparent. We know that there will be freedom of information requests anyway, so rather than wait for them to come in, I believe that the House should be proactive and take that step.

In effect, what is the big deal? Yes, costs are attached, and the Leader of the House gave us a figure of £2 million earlier, but I am willing to bet that the public out there-who may or may not be listening to or watching this debate-would think that it was a price well worth paying for transparency in Parliament and for restoring some trust in our democracy.

We have had much discussion, some of it rather amusing, about whether what is proposed will be difficult to achieve, with all the redacting and so forth that will be required, but it is really not that complicated. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have both managed to follow such an arrangement for some time. Perhaps our officials could speak to their officials to work out the best, most civilised and reasonable way of proceeding. I quite like the example mentioned earlier of having a standard receipt form into which all the details could be put, perhaps online to save some of our staff's work and departmental resources, ensuring that receipts are tendered for the auditors to look at. There are lots of ways doing that and a streamlined system could be put in place while ensuring that all the information is in the public domain.

John Mann (Bassetlaw, Labour): On the question of the cost and the 1.2 million figure for receipts, was the hon. Lady as surprised as I was that the costs went so high? Does it not seem that many costs are included in the calculation? If one were merely scanning in pieces of paper, the recurrent cost would, in fact, be extremely low.

• Jo Swinson: Another point to be borne in mind is that presumably we are going back to 2004, which will include several years' worth of expenses. If these had been annual costs, one would not have expected them to be so high. As I say, I believe that the House will be able to take steps to collect the information in a more sensible way before publishing it, so that the process is made easier.

I very much agreed with the sentiments of Dr. Wright on the requirements for receipts. I would be in favour of having a zero limit on the requirement for receipts, as was initially recommended by the Members Estimate Committee. When I worked in business, that was standard practice. I understand that it might be a bit fiddly having to submit full receipts, but I think that the public would welcome it. If we are going to take a step towards transparency, we should go the whole way: we would have nothing to hide and the public would be aware of that fact. As we get it all into the open, it will just become routine.

I was asked earlier about the experience of the Scottish Parliament. Yes, if we proceed with the new arrangement, I am sure that journalists will still pick up on little stories. Let us think of some examples of what was reported in the Scottish press. One story was about an MSP who claimed for a pint of milk and a packet of tea bags for the office, but to be honest, I do not know what the story is in that. When I worked in an office, whoever nipped out to buy a new packet of tea bags or pot of coffee reclaimed the money from the petty cash when they returned and stuck the receipt in the petty cash tin. That is not a story. That is not scandalous. Frankly, if that is the worst that the newspapers can come up with, people will soon get bored; the press will not sell many papers by saying that tea and coffee are provided in MPs' offices.

The audit principle in the motions before us is also very good. I am delighted to see that the internal auditing will be more robust. More important, however, is the principle that external auditing has to be accepted. That is absolutely essential. Having each MP externally audited at least once in a Parliament is the right way forward.

• Roger Williams (Brecon & Radnorshire, Liberal Democrat): My hon. Friend has come to what I think is the most important point: the auditing, particularly the external auditing, of Members' claims, which provides protection for Members as much as for the public and the public purse. Members should look forward to it rather than be afraid of it. I say in passing that my hon. Friend might be a bit optimistic in thinking that full publication will somehow defuse the public interest in all this. The public interest will still be there, because some members of the public simply delight in these matters. I am nevertheless very much in favour of going ahead with the freedom of information proposals.

• Jo Swinson: I am sure that there will still be great public interest in the issue, but I suspect that some of the more lurid and scandalous stories will be abated and that we will get rid of the perception that Members of Parliament are trying to hide something, which would be a very good thing indeed. My hon. Friend makes a good point about auditing giving Members a degree of protection. I believe that the opinion of most Members throughout has been that we want to ensure that we are doing things properly, but there has often been uncertainty and a lack of clarity about exactly what the right procedures are. It has been felt that it is somehow possible for Members to get into hot water even having stuck to the rules. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase pointed out, a full transparency system has the advantage of enabling us to know that everything will be in the public domain, and a matter of judgment for our constituents.

What happens next? I had hoped to intervene on the Leader of the House to follow up our exchange last October, when I asked when our expenses would be published. Initially, they were to be published last autumn. The Leader of the House explained today in colourful detail some of the difficulties encountered in the preparation of the material for publication and some of the important security considerations involved. Perhaps the Deputy Leader of the House will enlighten us further when he winds up the debate. Now that we are aware of the scale of the task, how many people are working on it and how much more there is to be done, may we have a more accurate estimate of the expected date of publication, so that the public can be reassured that the process will not drag on indefinitely?

My final point relates to freedom of information legislation and to whom it applies. The one issue about which I still feel some concern is whether there is any prospect of further attempts in the House to exempt Members of Parliament from freedom of information legislation. I asked the Leader of the House that question earlier today, during business questions. Kate Hoey and my hon. Friend Martin Horwood have also asked for assurances in that regard, but as yet none has been entirely forthcoming.

Earlier this week, media reports suggested that there had been some tentative agreement between the Labour and Conservative parties on exemption from freedom of information legislation, but that the relevant order had been withdrawn when the agreement collapsed. I hope that lessons will be learned from the events of this week, and that there will be no moves to create another such agreement and to return the proposal to the House.

• David Heath: I do not know whether my hon. Friend noticed that during the proceedings before the order was withdrawn it was submitted to another place, where it was examined by the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments. The Committee reached what I gather is, in the language of the other place, the damning conclusion "that it may imperfectly achieve its policy objectives." I am told that that is the strongest criticism that the Committee makes against a statutory instrument, and some difficulty may be encountered in getting it through the other place even if some unpleasant collusion happens in this House.

• Jo Swinson: We were saved by the other place from the Bill presented by David Maclean. I hope that the other place will not be required to save us again, but if it is, what my hon. Friend has said may provide us with some reassurance. It is in all our interests to deal with this issue, to put it behind us, and to get on with restoring public trust. I believe that the best way in which the House can do that is to go down the route of full transparency. I hope that notwithstanding the new categories that are being introduced, once the first tranche of freedom of information expenses have been published, the House will recognise that continuing that practice is the wise thing to do.