MPs' expenses to go online with help of Tim Berners-Lee

Laying out plans for government reform following the expenses scandal, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said all such data will go online within days and with the help of the web's creator.

Speaking in parliament today, Brown said: "All MPs' past and future expenses should and will be published on the internet in the next few days."

Exactly which government site would house such data was not made clear in Brown's speech.

Brown also pledged to open up more government data than just that related to expenses and pulled in the ultimate web expert for the job. "And so that Government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the World Wide Web, to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming month," Brown said.

The promise echos previously announced plans from the Cabinet Office to put as much public data online as possible.

Berners Lee is an advocate of putting as much data as possible into the public domain. After speaking at the Webby Awards last night where he was awarded a lifetime achievement award he told the BBC: "The (internet] explodes when somebody has the creativity to look at a piece of data that's put there for one reason and realises they can connect it with something else."

He went on to suggest such collaboration could lead to the cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's or cancer, adding: "Giving people access to the data gives scientists huge amounts of power, it gives citizens huge amounts of power."