Accommodation documents relating to Ronnie Campbell and Simon Danczuk

Request

  1. Copies of any documentation relating to renting to Simon Danczuk MP's second home, as at 2nd Dec 2014. I.e. a copy of his most recent accommodation contract that was submitted to IPSA, along with the relevant documentation for his most recent rent payment at that time.

  2. Copies of any documentation relating to renting to Ronnie Campbell MP's second home, as at 2nd June 2014. I.e. a copy of his most recent accommodation contract that was submitted to IPSA, along with the relevant documentation for his most recent rent payment at that time.

Response

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), Accommodation Expenditure is provided to meet costs necessarily incurred on overnight accommodation which is required for the performance of an MP’s parliamentary functions.

MPs may only claim for Accommodation Expenditure in relation to a property at one location, which may be either:

  1. In the London Area, or

  2. Within the MP’s constituency, or within 20 miles of any point on the constituency boundary.

Claims may only be made for Accommodation Expenditure (other than hotel costs) once IPSA has approved the MP’s rental contract and agreed that such claims can be made.

At the end of each financial year[1], we publish the names of all landlords from whom MPs rent accommodation alongside the first part of the postcode for the property rented. This information can be found at the following address: http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/AnnualisedData.aspx.

Please find use the links below to view the requested leases:

We have redacted some information from these leases under section 38 (health and safety) and section 40 (personal information) of the FOIA.

Section 38(1)(b) (Health and safety) of the FOI Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOI Act would, or would be likely to, endanger the safety of any individual. As required under the terms of the FOIA, we have conducted a public interest test with regards this exemption. After considering the nature of the withheld information it is our opinion that were a disclosure to be made into the public domain it is likely that this information could be used to endanger the safety of the individuals who rely upon these locations for accommodation.

Although we recognise the public interest in transparency surrounding the publishing of this information there is also a strong public interest in ensuring that as an organisation we are able to protect our service users from threats to their safety, which is achieved through our capacity to withhold certain information from disclosure. This is also in line with our stated publication policy. It is for this reason that we have decided that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Some information contained within the leases, such as the names of third parties and their signatures is ‘personal data’, as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). As such, we have withheld such information in accordance with section 40 of the FOIA. For reference, section 40(2) provides that personal information about third parties is exempt information if disclosure would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the DPA, where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. You can find out more information about personal data and FOI via guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on their website: http://ico.org.uk.

[1] We started this exercise for the 2014-15 financial year and will update on an annual basis following the end of each financial year.

Ref:
CAS-33557
Disclosure:
27 November 2015
Categories:
MPs' ACCOMMODATION
Exemptions Applied:
Section 38