Request for details of claims relating to a specified provider

Request

Please could you confirm, from 2010 to the most recently available data:

(i) The amount (in GBP) of claims submitted by MPs for invoices/services/etc from Buttermountain Limited

(ii) The amount (in GBP) of claims paid

(iii) The amount (in GBP) of claims not paid (if any)

(iv) The number of claims made, paid, and not paid

(v) The names of the MPs who have made claims for invoices/services/etc from Buttermountain Limited, and the amount (in GBP) of claims submitted and paid

I would appreciate if the information could be broken down by year, but would also be happy to accept it as aggregate values over the period. I would also be grateful if you could confirm the exact period the data covers.

Response

I can confirm that we do hold information relevant to your request, but it is subject to a Refusal Notice under section 12(1) of FOIA.

This exemption applies because we estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit as laid down in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. For IPSA this amount is £450 or 18 hours’ work.

In calculating whether the appropriate limit has been reached, an organisation can take into account the cost of:

a) Determining whether it holds the information,

b) Locating the information, or a document which may contain the information,

c) Retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information, and

d) Extracting the information from a document containing it.

MPs are not required to confirm the names of suppliers separately from the evidence they provide, so we do not record the names of particular suppliers when handling claims, only the type of service claimed for. Our expense system does not, therefore, have a field where its mandatory to enter the supplier. These costs could fall under a range of expense types, including:

  • Website - Design/Production

  • Website – Hosting

  • Website - Design/Prod Wind. Up

  • Website - Hosting Wind. Up

  • Professional Services

  • Professional Services Wind. Up

  • Advertising

  • Advertising Wind. Up

  • Website hosting and design

  • Bought-in services - Professional & consultancy

We would therefore have to review all receipts submitted since 2010 under all of the above expense types in order to identify which claims were invoiced to MPs by Buttermountain. This would be a significant amount of work. For example, for the period 2018/19 this would involve searching 3,252 expense lines. We estimated that it would take approximately 2 minutes to find, export and review each receipt. For 2018/19 alone it would take 108 hours to locate, export and extract the information requested. This process would then need to be repeated for each year since 2010.

As the estimated number of hours exceeds 18, your request has been refused.

If you are able to narrow your request to specific claim numbers, year or MP it may be possible to provide information within the allotted time.

Ref:
RFI-202005-5
Disclosure:
19 June 2020
Categories:
COPIES OF RECEIPTS/INVOICES
Exemptions Applied:
Section 12