Details of Clive Lewis MP’s expense claims

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), claims for reimbursement must be supported by evidence. As such, we hold all supporting documentation provided in support of claims made by MPs.

Under the Scheme, Staffing or Office Costs can be claimed for payments for bought-in services (‘professional services’), where staffing services are provided by companies, self-employed individuals or others not on the payroll.

As you will be aware, details of all claims made by MPs are published on our website every two months. The table below sets out details of the requested claims information. The receipts accompany this request.

Please note that we have redacted some information from those receipts in accordance with s.31 FOIA (Law enforcement) and s.40 FOIA (Personal data). Further information on both these exemptions can be found below.

Exemptions applied

Section 31 – Law Enforcement

Information relating to:

• Invoice numbers

• Personal bank account numbers

• Other sensitive financial information

This information has been withheld under Section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOI Act. This section of the Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOI Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention (or detection) or crime.

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 probable that this information could be traced back to sensitive personal or commercial information which could be used for criminal activity. Although we recognise the public interest in transparency surrounding the publishing of information relating to MPs’ expenses there is also a strong public interest in ensuring that we are able to protect our service users from the threat of being subjected to criminal activity.

In our opinion the public interest in protecting the security of MPs and their property outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Section 40 – Personal data

Personal addresses of third-parties

Some details relating to third parties are ‘personal data’, as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As such, we are unable to disclose this information. Section 40(2) of the FOIA 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.

We do not consider it within the reasonable expectations of third party suppliers that their address details would be disclosed. As such, we do not consider that disclosure of address information would be fair, and are obliged to withhold it from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA.

This part of the section 40 exemption is an absolute exemption and so no consideration of public interest arguments for and against disclosure is required .

You can find out more information about personal data and FOI via guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on their website.

This concludes our response to your request.