Details of all hotel accommodation by MPs since they were elected

Request

Under the FoI Act of 2000, I request the following information:

Details of every hotel accommodation claim made by the following MPs, since they were each elected:

  • Peter Aldous

  • Richard Bacon

  • Duncan Baker

  • George Freeman

  • Brandon Lewis

  • Clive Lewis

  • Jerome Mayhew

  • Chloe Smith

  • Liz Truss

  • James Wild

For each claim, each titled by claim reference (as they are publicly listed under each MP's business costs on the IPSA website), the details I request are:

  • The specific dates during which each hotel stay took place, i.e. the check in and check out dates.

  • The number of people covered by the cost of each stay (because I understand MPs may be claiming expenses on behalf of dependent family members)

  • The address of the hotel stayed at. If it is not possible to provide the address for security reasons etc, I request the brand name of the chain of hotels it is part of (if applicable). If these MPs have instead been staying at any independent hotels, I request the first half of the postcode to which they each belong, e.g. SW1. In either case I request the hotel’s star rating, e.g. whether it is, for example, a four-star hotel.

Response

I can confirm that we hold information relevant to your request, but it is subject to a Refusal Notice under section 12(1) of the FOIA. This exemption applies because we estimate that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit set by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 (Regulations).

Under the Regulations a public authority may only take into account the following tasks:

  • determining whether it holds the information

  • locating the information, or a document that contains the information

  • retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information, and

  • extracting the information from a document containing it

A public authority must estimate the time taken by an individual to carry out these tasks at a flat rate of £25 per hour. The appropriate limit is therefore exceeded when the time taken to complete the activities exceeds, for IPSA, £450 or 18 hours.

We estimate that the time taken to carry out the tasks required to process your request is 92 hours. From our initial investigations we can tell you that, even before the pandemic, the number of claims made for hotel accommodation by these MPs has fallen.

Ref:
RFI-202107-06
Disclosure:
19 August 2021
Categories:
MPs' TRAVELMPs' ACCOMMODATION
Exemptions Applied:
Section 12