A VICTORY for those campaigning for more openness in Government - and one in the eye for those who want to keep secret the machinations of MPs and their expenses claims.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to publish the receipts handed in by members to justify their claims for expenses.
Ipsa has been given five weeks to produce the relevant documents or possibly face contempt of court charges. The authority does have the right to appeal, so the battle has not finally been won or lost.
But it would be a national outrage if the taxpayer – especially after the expenses scandal of a few years ago – were denied the chance of seeing how his money is spent by MPs, especially in view of the fact that public funds were treated in such a cavalier fashion by some politicians so recently.
What, of course, is so distasteful about all this, is that parliamentarians passed the Freedom of Information Act, yet from time to time try to exempt themselves from its effects. They have the power, unlike ordinary mortals such as you and me, to put themselves in a position where this legislation does not apply. And that is just plain wrong.
Incidentally, this latest development was instigated by newspapers - and all credit to them.. No wonder there is a move in some quarters to apply regulations to the press.
That could well be the start of a police state in this country - and it should be fought tooth and nail.
n As each day passes, some new horror story emerges from the Jimmy Savile saga.
One of the perils of this distasteful matter is that many innocent people can be tarred with the same brush as those who may be guilty.
Various people have come forward claiming they have in the past been sexually abused by those who are still living, but refusing to name them.
This has unfairly but inevitably led to speculation and suspicion falling on people who have not been involved at all. That is why accusers should come clean about their assailants or not say anything at all.
As Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust has justly observed: “Even those of us who were not employees at the time are inheritors of shame.”
Meanwhile, this affair is not going to go away. Indeed it seems to get bigger and more horrendous as each day passes.
I expect many more heads to roll when the full scale of this scandal comes to light, if ever it does.
n Believe it or not, a large number of weapons have been confiscated by security officials from visitors to the House of Commons.
So far this year no fewer than 126 knives have been seized from visitors, plus a sabre, a sword and an extendable baton. It gets curiouser and curiouser as Alice might have said.
Meanwhile, at the end of every sitting day, officials in the Commons pick up a selection of cutlery, pepper pots, salt cellars, et alia from the staircase leading to the chamber itself. Why should that be?
The reason is that visitors take these items – invariably embossed with the portcullis – from the restaurants in the Palace of Westminster as souvenirs.
When they later climb that staircase to enter the Chamber, it dawns on them at the last minute that they will be searched before they are allowed in, even though they have been searched earlier as they entered the building itself.
That is why they ditch their ill-gotten gains on the stairs before they can be caught red-handed with their booty.
n So much for the Tory ideal of giving local people more say in running their own affairs without Whitehall and ministers forever poking their nose into parochial matters.
I see that the Conservative’s list of would-be candidates at the next general election is being revived again.
A number of constituency Conservative associations - so far unspecified - will be ordered to pick names from this list, even if they would prefer to be represented at Westminster by a local person or at least someone of their choice rather than by an edict from Conservative Party headquarters.
If a constituency party chooses to defy this order then, it seems, steps will be taken at the highest level to ensure that the candidate chosen by the “rebel” local party will not be recognised as the official Tory candidate.
Shameful, if you ask me.
This has all the dangers of recruiting starry-eyed people who suddenly find that Westminster is not what they thought it would be.
Take Louise Mensch, who won the Corby seat for the Conservatives. After little over two years as a backbencher, she has quit, citing family reasons and the likelihood that she would be thrashed at the next election in what is not generally a Tory seat.
Her husband Peter suggests that she might not have been “Conservative Party enough” to get promoted from the backbenches.,
So she did nobody, least of all David Cameron and her constituents, any favours at all by deciding to fight the seat in 2010.
Why is it that Conservative bigwigs cannot resist meddling in matters which should not be their concern at all?
n The Education Secretary Michael Gove does the right thing and graciously apologises – although several decades too late – to his old school for his unseemly behaviour as a pupil in the classroom.
Meanwhile, TV presenter Fiona Phillips does just the opposite.
She was invited to address her old school in Southampton and totally ungraciously slags it off in front of the (no doubt) delighted pupils.
She effectively blamed the school for her poor examination results, and for turning her into a not-nice-to-know teenager.
She also admits to locking one teacher in a cupboard and throwing another over a bush. It has been difficult to find, in what has been reported of her rant, much suggestion that she blames herself for any of this. It seems to be all part of our old friend, the blame culture.
If Phillips’s conduct was typical of her generation of schoolchildren and if it is still the case today, no wonder Gove finds it hard to attract decent people into the teaching profession.
