The finding that Derek Conway MP misused his staff allowance for years is the inevitable result of a decision taken in 2006 by Speaker Michael Martin to ban all disclosure of the names and salaries of MPs’ staff.

Way back in January 2005 I filed a freedom of information request seeking a full breakdown of the names and salaries of all MPs’ staff. Initially, the Commons refused the request by claiming it did not hold the information. The Information Commissioner found that in fact it did. Commons officials then claimed that publishing the names of staff would be an invasion of staff privacy and breach their ‘health and safety’.

The Information Commissioner Richard Thomas ruled that publishing the names of MPs staff did
not violate the privacy of MPs. However, he was powerless to order disclosure after the Speaker of the House issued a certificate in May 2006 claiming publication was ‘prejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs.’

Now the taxpayer will be forced to pay for yet another sleaze inquiry or police investigation into politicians’ misuse of public funds when all this could have been avoided simply by providing full disclosure of MPs’ expenses when I asked three years ago. Local constituents are best placed to monitor their MPs’ performance. They are the ones who will know if those claiming to be staff are actually doing any work. Surely, it is to their constituents that MPs must be accountable?

If the House of Commons had not banned disclosure of staff names and salaries in 2006 then the current scandal would have been stopped in its tracks: saving thousands of pounds of public money. Instead, MPs continue enjoy a carte blanche system in which the only people they have to account to are faceless Whitehall bureaucrats. If MPs are to have any credibility with the public they must disclose a full breakdown of ALL their expenses.

A decision by the Information Tribunal published recently has further fueled my belief that the Data Protection Act is the worst piece of legislation currently on the books. The Press Gazette reported the result of London Borough of Camden v Information Commissioner in which the Tribunal upheld Camden’s decision to keep secret the names of those issued with anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs).

David Farrer, deputy chairman of the tribunal, said in the ruling that publishing the identity of ASBO recipients, even when the order was still in effect, could cause “unjustified humiliation” and may violate the Data Protection Act.

The Tribunal’s main concern was not about the rights of the law abiding public to live free from fear of vandals or open justice but that disclosure might be “unwarranted by reason of prejudice to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of the ASBO subjects.”

I’m all for protecting the privacy of individuals but when we’re dealing with sentences given out in a so-called open court that is funded entirely by the taxpayer, it cannot be right to keep secret the results of the criminal justice system from the people who pay for it and in whose name it operates.

Another surprising circumstance of this case is that the original requester of the information – David Leigh of the Guardian – was not even informed of the Tribunal hearing despite much of the argument being about the reason for his request and what he planned to do in his investigation.

The fact is that every ASBO is made in public in the sense that any adult can supposedly attend court proceedings. But of course no one does anymore and as a citizen has no rights to use the information he witnesses in court, effectively courts are now becoming the secret cloisters of legal professionals. If councils can now also keep secret their use of ASBOs then we really are moving toward a system of secret justice.