Andrew Percy MP's costs and expenses

I can confirm that IPSA holds some of the requested information.

Specifically, you asked for information about his salary, his pension contributions, his expense claims, staffing costs and office costs.

You may wish to know that IPSA regularly publishes details of MPs’ expense claims on its website. Every two months IPSA publishes claims processed up to three months previously. To date, we have published details of expense claims processed up to December 2010 and on 2 June we will be publishing details of expense claims made in January and February. If you search the database you will find details of claims processed for Mr Percy during this period. This information is, therefore, exempt under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to the applicant by other means). We have taken the view that claims in the period from January 2011 to the present are exempt under section 22(1) of the FOIA (Information intended for future publication).

We have also taken the view that the exemption under section 22(1) applies to information relating to Mr Percy’s staffing costs. Details of all MPs staffing costs are due to be published on our website on 7 July. We have considered whether the public interest in releasing the information outweighs the application of the exemption. It is our opinion that the public interest is best served by publishing the information at set dates, rather than on an ad hoc basis, as this way a clear and complete set of information is published, which should also avoid causing confusion. It is for these stated reasons that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

In respect of Mr Percy’s salary, this information is also already in the public domain, but for ease of reference I can advise you that the annual salary of MPs is £65,738.00. IPSA does not pay the employers’ pension contributions for MPs, so we are unable to provide you with this information as we do not hold it. In respect of any personal pension contributions Mr Percy may make, we judge that this information is exempt under section 40 (personal information) of the FOIA. Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under the FOI Act disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. Please see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents).