Pay and expenses paid to MPs

Request

Can I have a full list of every MP who has been on sick and days they have been on sick in the last 5 years?

Can I have a full list of pay and all expenses claimed by ever MP from this last Parliament?

Do MPs pay tax ie. as PAYE or via an accountant?


Response

MPs are office-holders and do not therefore take ‘sick days’. As such, this information is not held by IPSA.

All MPs receive a salary through IPSA’s payroll and are subject to PAYE.

IPSA publishes all claims made by MPs for business costs and expenses on a dedicated publication website.

Claims are published in two-month tranches, three months after they have been processed and validated. The next publication date is 9 July 2015, which will cover those claims processed by IPSA during February and March 2015. The full data for the 2014-15 financial year will be published on 10 September 2015.

In the meantime, you can view all claims made by MPs in the last Parliament that have been published on our publication website. The following instructions may help you locate the information.

  1. Select ‘Data Downloads’ via the menu bar at the top of the page.

  2. Select a financial year. This will open a spreadsheet containing all claims made by every MP in that financial year.

  3. You can use the spreadsheet to filter for those MPs you are seeking information on.

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by other means is not subject to release. As the information you have requested is already available on our website, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to applicant by other means).

I noted earlier that some claims are due to be published in the future. You can view our publication schedule on our website, via the following link: http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/files/Publication_dates.pdf

Section 22(1) of the FOIA states that information intended for future publication is also exempt from release. 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 a full list rather than on an ad hoc basis, as in this way a clear and complete set of information is published, avoiding any potential confusion. It is for this reason that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this stage.

Ref:
CAS-16813
Disclosure:
3 June 2015
Categories:
GENERAL EXPENSES ENQUIRY
Exemptions Applied:
Section 21