Where will your MP be this Friday? Unless he or she has had a sudden fit of guilt in the last couple of days, not in the Palace of Westminster, fighting to preserve your freedom as a citizen.
The Freedom of Information Act - or FOI to those of us who use it regularly - was a long-overdue piece of legislation and, when it came, a deeply flawed one. But it was a step in the right direction.

It is not just a right for journalists, although it has proved an effective tool for us in trying to get information into the public domain that the authorities would really rather you didn't know. Every citizen can use it to ask questions of public bodies.
There are a lot of get-out clauses and exemptions. For example, the quango-culture is rife in regions like ours, yet these organisations have claimed exemption from the FOI Act, making them even less accountable to the people of the country as they decide behind closed doors how they will spend our money.
Yet, despite its weaknesses, we at the Daily Post have frequently used FOI requests to get to the bottom of issues we feel you have the right to know about.
It clearly embarrasses and inconveniences public bodies, but when, for instance, the civil service claims to be moving thousands of jobs to the provinces yet in practice does virtually nothing about it, you ought to know about it, and it is our job to find out and tell you. We got to the bottom of that story through an FOI request, exposing what was nothing short of a national scandal.
On Friday, as you may have read in Tuesday's Daily Post, hardly any of our MPs will be in Westminster when there is a very real chance that an attempt to undermine the Act will be voted through. The Private Member's Bill by Tory backbencher David Maclean seeks to make MPs exempt from the Act.
One of our MPs, Wallasey's Angela Eagle, says she will be there to vote, but will vote in favour of the Bill, on the grounds that she doesn't want us to have access to MPs' constituency correspondence. This might be a valid argument, but for the fact that private correspondence of this kind is specifically excluded from FOI requests under one of the many exemptions. You would think she would know this, wouldn't you?
As for the rest, a few stalwarts like Peter Kilfoyle and Frank Field are resolutely against it, but are not going to be there to vote. Others are undecided, while a handful of others who won't be voting are in favour of the change.
MPs are busy people, and do a lot of unsung work in their constituencies. Traditionally, they head for home on a Friday to hold surgeries and tackle the needs of their electorate. It is not a particularly glamorous part of their job, but it is a very important one, and part of why we elect them.
There is little doubt that this Bill goes before the House on Friday for precisely this reason. It is easy to get such a controversial move through when hardly anybody is there.
So my question is this. Would you rather have your MP come home this Friday to make himself available to help you get your bins collected or your school refurbished or, just this once, would you rather he stayed in London to help preserve your freedom, and your right to know?
If MPs exempt themselves from this legislation, they will be making a mockery of it, and seriously damaging their own reputations in the eyes of fair-minded citizens. It is nothing short of hippocracy. If your MP has nothing to hide, he won't mind having an FOI request put in against him.
We need stronger Freedom of Information legislation, yet the winds of change are blowing in the opposite direction. This move is serious enough in itself, but if it gets through will also represent the thin end of the wedge.
It isn't too late to influence this process. Send your MP an email now, or ring his office, and demand that he turns up to vote, and that he votes to protect your freedom.

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