Correspondence between IPSA and Khalid Mahmood's office

IPSA holds the information that you request.

MPs, including Mr Mahmood, correspond with us on a regular basis on matters relating to their pay, pensions, business costs and expenses and the management of their staff. Similarly, MPs staff may correspond with us on behalf of their MP or directly relating to issues of their own employment, such as their pay, pension or other contractual issues.

Such correspondence constitutes the personal data of Mr Mahmood and his staff members and as such, we are obliged to consider whether it would be fair and lawful to disclose the information, in accordance with the Data Protection Act. We do not consider it within the reasonable expectations of Mr Mahmood or his staff that all correspondence exchanged with us during a three year period would be disclosed, especially without any reference to a particular topic or issue. We further consider that junior staff members in particular would have a considerably higher expectation of privacy, especially in matters relating to their personal employment. We recognise that there is a legitimate interest in ensuring transparency in matters relating to the spending of public funds, which we believe is met by the significant amount of information already published relating to MPs’ business costs, expenses and staffing arrangements. As such, we do not consider that disclosure of three years’ worth of correspondence would be fair, and are obliged to withhold it from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA. You can find out more about personal data and the FOIA via guidance produced by the ICO.