Friday 22 May 2009

MP's self-published expenses

The other day I read some blogpost somewhere out on the internet saying that MPs who were publishing their own expenses were doing it in lots of different formats, some in PDF, some as google docs, some as just summaries and totals, and this was going to be a little bit of a pain for the public.

Indulge me for a moment, the only independent body who can regulate MPs expenses are the public. Not the general public, but people like the blogosphere and the people who make up the media and local constituents.

No QUANGO or arms length government body or private sector organisation is going to have the confidence of the public, parliament should be beholden to the public. We get to chose who is hired and fired. So the public needs the information in an easily processable form.

Sometime soon the House of Commons are going to publish all the expenses information, but as with most government things its going to be in a format that isn't the best for the peopel who will be using the information.

I don't know what format's best, Excel spreadsheets, CSV files, some kind of xml rss feed? I dunno. What I can suggest is that we look at all the MPs who've published their own expenses online and see what different formats they're using and which ones we like best.

I'm compiling a list of MPs who've self-published so far (with links)
Ainsworth, Peter - PDF (damaged and could not be repaired apparently)
Alexander, Danny - summary of quarterly claims 2008/09 html table, itemised 2009/10 googledocs
Allen, Graham - html summary of latest month's claims
Armstrong, Hilary - Scans of claims
Atkinson, Peter - Link to TheyWorkForYou
Austin, John - copy of TheyWorkForYou
Bacon, Richard - PDF of photocopy of claim
Baker, Normal - html summary and .doc
Banks, Gordon - html table summary
Burt, Lorely - html summary
Cable, Vince - html summary
Cameron, David - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Clarke, Kenneth - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Clegg, Nick - jpeg 2008/09 expenses
Duncan, Alan - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Fox, Liam - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Francois, Mark - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Gibson, Dr Ian - PDF of photocopy of claim
Grieve, Dominic - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Huhne, Chris - PDFs of ACA and IEP
Hunt, Jeremy - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Lamb, Norman - PDF of photocopy of claim
May, Theresa - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
McLoughlin, Patrick - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Mitchell, Andrew - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Mundell, David - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Paterson, Owen - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Stunnel, Andrew - html prose summary and jpeg
Swinson, Jo - PDF of quarterly expenses
Villiers, Theresa - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Willetts, David - Conservative shadow cabinet googledocs
Wood, Mike - PDFs of ACA, IEP and comms
Wright, David - Statement on expenses
Yeo, Tim - html summary of claims
Young, Sir George - table summary of claim in html
Its going to take me ages, there are lots of MPs and they all have their websites laid out in different ways.

Hmm, and for my own purposes, this is a list of MP's websites that I have checked that don't have self-published expenses data.
Adams, Gerry
Abbott, Diane
Afriyie, Adam
Ainsworth, Bob
Alexander, Douglas
Amess, David
Ancram, Michael
Anderson, David
Anderson, Janet
Baird, Vera
Baldry, Antony
Balls, Ed
Davis, Dai
Winterton, Ann
Winterton, Rosie
Woodward, Shaun
Wright, Dr Tony
Wright, Iain
Wright, Jeremy
Wyatt, Derek
And MPs with no website
Ainger, Nick
Arbuthnot, James
Atkins, Charlotte
Austin, Ian
Bailey, Adrian
Barron, Kevin
Beresford, Sir Paul
Betts, Clive
Blackman, Elizabeth
Blair, Tony
Blunkett, David
Bone, Peter
Borrow, David
Boswell, Tim
Brown, Gordon
Brown, Nick
Browne, Desmond
Burnham, Andrew
Byers, Stephen
Caborn, Richard
Campbell, Gregory
Campbell, Ronald
Cash, William
Caton, Martin
Chope, Christopher
Clappison, James
Clark, Greg
Clarke, Charles
Clarke, Tom
Clwyd, Ann
Conway, Derek
Cormack, Patrick
Cousins, Jim
Cox, Charles
Cummings, John
Curtis-Thomas, Clare
Dalyell, Tam
Davis, David
Dobbin, Jim
Dodds, Nigel
Doherty, Pat
Doran, Frank
Durkan, Mark
Eagle, Maria
Etherington, William
Farrelly, Paul
Fisher, Mark
Gibb, Nick
Gildernew, Michelle
Gillan, Cheryl
Godsiff, Roger
Goggins, Paul
Goodman, Paul
Greenway, John
Hammond, Phil
Hayes, John
Heal, Sylvia
Heyes, David
Hogg, Douglas
Hollobone, Philip
Howarth, George
Howells, Dr Kim
Humble, Joan
Ingram, Adam
Johnson, Diana
Jowell, Tessa
Joyce, Eric
Kaufman, Gerald
Kemp, Fraser
Kennedy, Jane
Laing, Eleanor
Lancaster, John
Letwin, Oliver
Lord, Michael
MacNeil, Angus
Mahmood, Khalid
Malins, Humphrey
Mallaber, Judy
Marsden, Gordon
Marshall, David
Martin, Michael
McAvoy, Thomas
McCartney, Ian
McCrea, William
McGrady, Edward
McGuiness, Martin
McNulty, Tony
Morley, Elliott
Mudie, George
Murphy, Conor
Murphy, Denis
Murphy, Jim
O'Hara, Eddie
Olner, Bill
Opik, Lembit
Owen, Albert
Paisley, Rev Ian
Palmer, Nick
Prescott, John
Reed, Jamieson
Rennie, Willie
Rifkind, Malcolm
Riordan, Linda
Robathan, Andrew
Robinson, Geoffrey
Robinson, Iris
Ruane, Chris
Russell, Christine
Ryan, Joan
Salmond, Alex
Sarwar, Mohammed
Seabeck, Alison
Sharma, Virendra Kumar
Shepherd, Richard
Simpson, David
Singh, Marsha
Skinner, Dennis
Smith, Geraldine
Smith, John
Smith, Sir Robert
Spicer, Michael
Stewart, Ian
Straw, Jack
Stringer, Graham
Syms, Robert
Tapsell, Sir Peter
Taylor, David
Tredinnick, David
Turner, Neil
Tyrie, Andrew
Vis, Rudolph
Walter, Robert
Wareing, Robert
Watts, Dave
Williams, Alan
Williams, Betty
Williams, Mark
Williams, Stephen
Wilshire, David
Wilson, Philip
Winterton, Nicholas
Wishart, Peter
Woolas, Phil
Wright, Anthony
Younger-Ross, Richard

4 comments:

  1. Here's one you didn't find: http://www.daidaviesmp.co.uk/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gerry Adams - he turns out to have a blog: http://leargas.blogspot.com/

    I do not see anything on it about his expenses.

    ReplyDelete