Enfield MP Joan Ryan's stand on freedom of information (From Enfield Independent)

Enfield MP Joan Ryan's stand on freedom of information

1:33pm Tuesday 7th April 2009

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In your front-page story (‘MPs claim £20k for second homes’, my MP Joan Ryan supported the openness of publishing expenses by informing us this was due to the Freedom of Information Act brought in by a Labour Government.

In 2007, with some other MPs including a Tory backbencher, Ms Ryan backed a Bill to exempt MPs from this Act in order to protect the confidentiality of those in her constituency, (though in a letter to me she promised her expenses would still be published.

When I requested under the FOI Act a breakdown of those expenses, I was directed to the Government page offering all MPs’ totalled yearly costing.

This exemption would have made information-gathering a major obstruction when locating abusers of expenses or other work-related matters by those we directly compensate.

After the order exempting MPs from the FOI Act had been withdrawn, a letter on January 28, 2009 arrived from Ms Ryan stating, “I firmly believe there should be transparency and openess in the publication of MPs’ expenses”.

I strongly admire Ms Ryan’s multi-faceted approach.

Michael Cox,Pentrich Avenue, Enfield

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