Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill - news

The above Bill has been featured here and elsewhere quite a bit over the last few weeks - it would remove both houses from the FOIA and exempt (currently with PI test) any form of correspondence from Members to public bodies -via a new s37A. The Bill reached Committee stage today unopposed. This article in the Guardian had previously indicated that that the Govt were split on the issue of allocating time to the Bill.

I have heard that the Bill Committee met this morning and the Bill went through, not sure whether to report stage or third reading though.

Latest versions of the Bill- some further amendments had been made prior to today

- The Campaign for FOI prepared this briefing for MPs

-The House of Commons library have also produced this research note

The membership of the Public Bill Committee that considered the Bill today was:

Chairmen: Mr Martin Caton

Mr James Arbuthnot
Mr Tim Boswell
Mr Nicholas Brown
Mr Tom Clarke
Mr Fraser Kemp
Jim Dowd
Mr Mike Hall
Nick Harvey
Mr George Howarth
Mr Greg Knight
Martin Linton
Peter Luff
David Maclean
Bridget Prentice
David Simpson
Mr John Spellar
Mr Don Touhig
Mr John Whittingdale