Correspondence between IPSA and Ian Paisley Jr. regarding budget overspends

IPSA holds the information that you have requested.

Under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), MPs are provided with various budgets to manage expenditure necessarily incurred in the exercise of their parliamentary functions.

MPs who spend more than their allotted budget in any financial year will be considered to have been paid an amount that IPSA subsequently determines should not have been paid. In this instance, IPSA can arrange for the amount to be deducted from further payment of claims to which the MP may become entitled or via salary deductions.

Details of all claims made by MPs each financial year, including those not paid or repaid can be found on our publication website, at the following address: https://www.theipsa.org.uk/mp-costs/your-mp/. This provides information on the total spend per MP, including those MPs with budget overspends.

In order to provide the information, we would need to manually search through five years’ worth of letters, emails and other correspondence held in both electronic and hard form in order to identify those relating to budget overspends. We have estimated that the cost of conducting this exercise would exceed the appropriate limit of £450 (Schedule 1, Part 1 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000). As such, we are not able to provide this information under section 12 of the FOIA.