Free Our Bills: The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.

11.38.13am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 27th Apr 2008

www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/

Charity MySociety has launched a campaign to help make all the laws we have to obey better. Shepway Lib Dem Local Party Chair Tim Prater has signed up, and thought you might want to take action and join up too.

As MySociety say:

"Writing, discussing and voting on bills is what we employ our MPs to do. If enough MPs vote on bills they become the law, meaning you or I can get locked up if they pass a bad one.

"The problem is that the way in which Bills are put out is completely incompatible with the Internet era, so nobody out there ever knows what the heck people are actually voting for or against. We need to free our Bills in order for most people to be able to understand what matters about them. "

This is being organised by the charity who help us keep an eye on our Members of Parliament with the website www.theyworkforyou.com . They'd like information about proposed new laws to be published in a better form, so we can all hear about them before it is too late.

You can read more about the campaign and the reasons behind it at www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/

Shepway Lib Dem Tim Prater commented:

"www.theyworkforyou.com is a great tool to learn what our MPs are doing and saying on our behalf, and can really allow us to hold them to account.

"Publishing bills the way MySociety suggest will cost very little extra, but would allow better information on what is actually being agreed in our name to be published, scrutinised and followed.

"The more people can actually read and understand what is being proposed in bills, the more input we can have by getting in touch with our MPs and giving our view on specific points - both positive and negative. If our MPs then listen, that leads to better legislation - and that's good for Parliament, and good for all of us who then have to live with the legislation when passed."

Related Links:

They Work For You web site

The "Free Our Bills" campaign