Andrew Turner has responded to the widespread concern about the ‘blacking out’ or ‘redaction’ of information on the expenses details published by the House of Commons yesterday.
The Islands’ MP explained that the redaction of the information was done by the House of Commons Authorities and not in response to a request from him – other than some personal details relating to his staff that had been overlooked in the draft version he received. In fact he asked for pages of correspondence between himself and the Fees Office to be reinstated but was told on 5th June that this was not possible as:
‘The MEC[Members Estimates Committee] agreed that correspondence with the staff of the House of Commons should be removed from the information to be published. Therefore it is not possible to reinstate this material.’
Mr Turner is therefore inviting any Islander who has viewed the information on-line but still has concerns to contact him and make arrangements to arrange to view the entire file – including the information that has been blacked-out and correspondence between his office and the House of Commons Authorities.
Mr Turner said:
“I understand the widespread concern about so much information being hidden. It has been reported in the national media that information in this format could hide such things as ‘flipping’ homes and claims from ‘fictitious’ companies. However, I have nothing to hide so if any Islander has any questions or concerns they are welcome to call my office on 530808 and make arrangements to view the file.”
Explaining why he is not putting the information on line he said:
“Anyone who has looked on-line can see that there are hundreds of pages – not least because I have provided receipts or other documentary evidence of all expenditure, however small. The file does contain some genuinely personal information such as my own bank statements and credit card details, bank account details and other information about my staff and personal telephone numbers. It would take many, many hours to go through all the pages, black out the personal information and then re-scan them. This seems to me to be the quickest and easiest way to deal with this issue.’
END Contact : Andrew Turner’s office 01983 530808
