This is yesterday’s news really but I had to post anyway. The UK government planned to introduce a Statutory Instrument to Parliament today that would have exempted MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act, but performed a rather embarrassing last-minute U-turn yesterday afternoon (Guardian, BBC). Gordon Brown claimed that this was due to the Tories pulling their support for the Bill, and there had been growing momentum behind a net-based campaign to oppose the bill led by the excellent MySociety who have claimed at least some of the credit for the U-turn.

Whatever it was that caused Cameron to pull Tory support or really made Gordon and his cronies change their minds, the end result is the right one for Parliament and for Open Government. This was an attempt to exempt themselves from entirely reasonable exposure that they no doubt hoped no one would notice being slipped through – they announced their intentions on the same day as the Heathrow runway decision was published. It’s no wonder that they are regarded as cynical and self-serving! Let’s hope that Tom Steinberg is right when he says “There’s no such thing as a good day to bury bad news any more, the Internet has seen to that.”

On a more personal level, the Labour Government has been responsible for introducing a number of quite intrusive proposals and changes to the law which require the public to sacrifice their privacy and anonymity, for example the national Identity register and the Communications Data Bill. The oft-repeated answer to their civil libertarian critics has been “if you’ve nothing to hide, then you’ve nothing to fear”, and although I think that this statement is deeply flawed I must admit to a certain satisfaction now that they’ve been forced to eat some of their own dog food.