Heather Brooke from the Citizen’s Guide to the FOI gave evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life regarding MP’s expenses but recieved a letter from the same committee which has been censored considerably.  According to Ms Brooke all the requested ‘redactions’ are already in the public domain: Keith Vaz’s wheelie bin bill and train tickets are published on parliament’s own website along with Ann Widdecombe’s train ticket. The facts about Derek Conway and Michael Trend are widely published and appear in parliamentary reports and debate.

The Sunlight Centre has been in contact with Ms Brooke today and she has sent us the below email of the content that the committee asked to remove from her evidence which would then be placed on the Committee’s website.  The full unredacted version of Ms Brooke’s evidence can be viewed on her website www.yrtk.org/  Below is the email sent to Ms Brooke suggesting the redactions.

·         On the second page, in the second paragraph redact from "That is how" to "Derek Conway".

·         On the second page, in the third paragraph redact the sentence "we do not know the full motivation of the person who exposed Derek Conway."

·         On the third page, in the paragraph under the heading "Reaction of travel information" redact from "Keith Vaz" to "based on reality". Then redact from "it was precisely" to "blackout" at the end of the paragraph. [DN: This means redacting most of the paragraph, but leaves the basic point that redacting information on direction of travel makes it difficult for the public /  media to scrutinise expense claims]

·         On the third page under the heading "publish addresses" redact from "Keith Vaz" to "blocked toilet etc".

·         on the last page in the first paragraph redact from "when I heard" to "to view these receipts".   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published on September 9th, 2009 by chris