Did your MP vote to hide their huge expense claims?

A full list here of MPs who voted in the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill to exempt themselves from FOI legislation.

The only local MP who voted in favour was Labour’s public schoolboy fantasist and paedo-obsessive Dan Norris. None of our other local Labour MPs could, apparently, be arsed to get to the commons to vote against the bill although Bristol West Lib Dem Stephen Williams did.

This raises the question of where were our New Labour MPs on Friday and what were they doing to earn their £800 odd of public money for that day? Norris and Williams we know attended. Dawn Primarolo has just had a major operation so The Blogger will grudgingly let her off. But what of New Labour backbench loyalists Naysmith and McCarthy?

Any sightings of this pair on Friday gratefully received. Strangely McCarthy usually updates her blog on Fridays and is only too keen to tell us, when it suits her, what she’s been doing and who she’s been seen with. Last Friday, in gruesome detail, she described her mercy mission to Bristol Cathedral – with onion up sleeve – to weep for Bristol’s home care workers whose livelihoods are being destroyed by her government’s own policies. The Friday before she helpfully listed her favourite pop songs about politicians. This week, when missing a controversial vote allowing MPs to withhold financial information about themselves from the public, she’s strangely reticent about what she was actually doing…

Meanwhile The Mail on Sunday claims David MacClean, the author of this iniquitous little bill to help MPs fill their boots with publicly-funded expense claims, bought a £3,300 quad bike on parliamentary expenses!

For the record, here’s what local MPs receive from public funds:

Kerry McCarthy (Labour, Bristol East): salary – £60,277; expenses – £127,797; total – £188,074

Stephen Williams (Lib Dem, Bristol West): salary – £60,277; expenses – £113,947; total – £174,234

Dawn Primarolo (Labour, Bristol South): salary – £99,908; expenses – £133,354; total – £233,262

Doug Naysmith (Labour, Bristol North West): salary – £60,277; expenses – £128,447; total – £188,724

Dan Norris (Labour, Wansdyke): salary – £60,277; expenses – £154,447; total – £214,724