Redacting MPs’ expense claims details will not stop terrorists
The murder of Sir David Amess has already resulted in more secrecy about MPs’ expenses. What is the right balance between security and transparency in our democracy, asks Political editor-at-large Martin Shipton
FIVE years ago Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a farright terrorist near her constituency office in Yorkshire.
Last week Sir David Amess lost his life in what appears to be another terrorist incident after being stabbed as he held an advice surgery for local residents in his Essex seat.
MPs have understandably been traumatised by both murders and some have called for greater security measures to help protect them.
Already the UK’s Parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses following representations about the level of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
The Guardian has reported how some details have been taken down from Ipsa’s website “in light of the terrible events last Friday”, adding that the organisation was “seeking fresh expert advice on what and how we publish your business and staffing costs”.
This could include withholding some information requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The publication of MPs’ spending due in November has also been postponed, according to the message sent to MPs on Tuesday by Ipsa’s chair, Richard Lloyd, and chief executive, Ian Todd.
They said Ipsa would help MPs to “make it as safe as possible for you to continue to engage with and represent your constituents, which plays such a vital role in our democracy”.
One Tory MP said: “The data they hold at the moment exposes us to a lot of risk in terms of where we are staying and when we are travelling … They need to completely reform the way they present this information.”
A Labour MP, who asked to remain anonymous because of threats against her, said Ipsa’s “publishing of highly detailed and itemised expenses always increases abuse towards us when the information is released”, and put colleagues on the defensive “up against hostility about even our stationery budgets”.
MPs also complained of delays in getting security equipment signed off for reimbursement, with a minister saying the review launched this week was “too late”.
Rupa Huq, a Labour backbencher, told the Guardian that since the death of Sir David, a close friend, she had been considering removing her address from the ballot paper that election candidates can choose to display to show voters they live locally.
She said: “We all live amongst our constituents and our address is on the ballot paper and I just don’t know if I’ll do that next time. [For] three elections I have had it published in full. You can have it redacted, and I’m thinking I might just do that next time.”
One Conservative MP said that after their address appeared on the ballot paper in 2019, political opponents sent drones over her house, took photos and plastered them on posters around their constituency.
While it’s entirely right that the killing of Sir David Amess should prompt a review of security precautions relating to MPs, it’s important to distinguish between the two kinds of threats they face.
There has been a lot of talk about the abusive and threatening nature of social media messages directed at politicians.
Much of it is vile, and women politicians in particular have been subjected to horrible threats.
The abuse of politicians has escalated since the original MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009, which showed in particular how some were manipulating Parliamentary rules on second homes to their – sometimes considerable – financial advantage.
Unfortunately this fostered a lazy view that all politicians were on the make and therefore fair game for abuse.
At the same time some media outlets created a misleading impression by totting up the amounts claimed by MPs to pay their staff and classifying them as “expenses”, as if the politicians were themselves pocketing the proceeds.
The reproduction of such distorted narratives led many users of social media to see politicians as a class unworthy of any respect, and deserving of abuse not simply in the context of expenses but for all the views they expressed.
Most of the abuse was confined to social media, although during the impasse over Brexit there were some ugly scenes where individual MPs were confronted and harangued by protesters.
Earlier this week a mock gallows with a noose appeared near Parliament and MPs were accused of being traitors and warned what fate awaited them.
Such behaviour is not in any way acceptable in a civilised society and firm action needs to be taken against those who engage in such activity.
But those who do so are in the main seeking to upset rather than physically wound. They enjoy the artificial world of social media, at one remove from reality, and the theatricality of creating an effect, but they are not the most serious threat to MPs and other politicians.
Jo Cox and Sir David Amess were murdered by terrorists and it is the warped ideologies they embrace that pose a genuinely dangerous threat to our democracy and to the individuals that serve it.
While social media platforms must be forced to make changes that halt the abuse and the threats they currently allow to proliferate, the security services must redouble their efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms and neutralise its capability.
Redacting details from the expense claims of MPs will not stop determined terrorists.
Jo Cox and Sir David Amess were killed in obvious locations that couldn’t be kept secret.
Transparency is essential in our democracy. We don’t want a secret society where elected representatives are inaccessible to those who elect them – that would be the negation of all we stand for.
But we also have a duty to protect the lives of those who represent us.
Security and transparency must not be allowed to become mutually exclusive.