MPs' pay and expenses

Request

Under the Freedom of information Act i would like to know since Jan 2010 or since your records began how many MPS have had a reduction in their pay/income. How many have declined payment for expenses. Are there any impending meeting or items on any agenda to discuss the reduction of MP's salaries.


Response

IPSA holds the information relating to part of your request.

On the first part of your request, our records began when IPSA came into existence in May 2010.  Since then, no MPs have taken a voluntary reduction in their annual salary.  IPSA is not responsible for Ministerial salaries, but you may be interested to see the briefing note on ministerial salaries provided by the House of Commons, which can be viewed by visiting this link to the UK Parliament website.

In relation to the second part of your request, to date, excluding payment of MPs’ and MPs’ staff salaries, two MPs have not made claims for business costs and expenses.  We publish annualised data on claims made for expenses by each MP on our website.  You can view each MP’s annual spend against each budget category by visiting this link to our publication website.  You may then select the financial year you are interested in and select to view the information by MP or constituency.  You may also download an Excel document containing all MPs’ annual expenditure data. 

Please note that the General Administrative Expenditure and Constituency Office Rental Expenditure budgets were merged in April 2011 and replaced with the Office Costs Expenditure.  Those budgets still appear in the 2011/2012 data as claims under the old budgets were allowed for a limited period to allow MPs time to adjust to the changes.  As a result, some MPs will show a zero spend on the old budgets and a spend on the new budget, which may be misleading.

For information prior to May 2010, you may wish to contact the House of Commons FOI team via the following email address: FOICommons@parliament.uk.

On the third part of your request, we are currently conducting a review of MPs’ pay and pensions.  There are no agenda items or meetings to discuss specifically a reduction of MPs’ salaries, but the review of MPs’ pay and pensions will be considered by IPSA’s Board in coming months.  You may find further information on the pay and pensions review and on the forthcoming public consultation in the autumn, by clicking on this link to our dedicated pay and pensions website.

Ref:
FOI2012-A048
Disclosure:
28 June 2012
Categories:
MPs' PAY AND PENSIONS
Exemptions Applied:
None