IT equipment claims for 2020-2021

I can confirm that we hold information relevant to your request.

1. Do MP’s have to list items individually or are they able to lump costs together, and if the latter is the case, do they have to identify the devices for which the lumped claim is being made?

Please see the answer to question 2.

2. Do MP’s have to justify their purchases, for example, why purchase a £1200 device rather than an £800 one?

This information is subject to a Refusal Notice under section 21 of the FOIA. This exemption applies where the information is reasonably accessible by other means. The Scheme of MPs’ Staffing and Business Costs sets out the rules on what MPs may and may not make claims for.

Guidance on how to claim and provision of supporting evidence is provided on the “IPSA for MPs” pages of the IPSA website.

3. Where a significant number of purchases have been made where the claimed amounts are identical, viz, 49, 19, 7, etc, has a single supplier been used for some or all of the equipment purchases?

4. For the items listed above, for each price, does this represent a single piece of equipment, for example, a laptop or could it be a number of items lumped together, for example, a laptop and a tablet?

5. For 4, if the latter is the case, please identify the number for each price which represent lumped items?

6. For the items identified by their prices above, how many are Apple laptop devices, or if a lumped price, an Apple laptop comprises a part of this?

7. For the items identified by their prices above, how many are Apple tablet devices, or if a lumped price, an Apple tablet comprises a part of this?

8. For the items identified by their prices in the table above, how many are Microsoft Surface tablet devices, or if a lumped price, a Microsoft Surface laptop comprises a part of this?

In order to answer questions 3-8, you would need to provide us with the names of the MPs or the claim references to which these figures relate. Your table refers to “prices”, but this appears to be the amount claimed by an MP for a particular item. We assume that you have totalled the amounts spent by MPs and that the items refer to the number of claims made by them. I apologise that clarification was not sought on this point at the time your request was made.

9. For all available computer-related claims for the 20-21 financial year, how many claims were for desktop computers? What was the number and cost of Apple computers and what was the number and value of non-Apple desktop computers?

IPSA does not keep separate lists of the equipment purchased by MPs. In order to provide this information, it would be necessary to go through each of the claims listed under the “short description” of Computer, laptop, PC, tablet & accessories.

This information 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 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.

The regulations allow for the following activities to be taken into account:

• Determining whether the information is held.

• Locating the information, or a document containing it.

• Retrieving the information, or a document containing it.

• Extracting the information from a document containing it.

To provide the information would entail locating the relevant invoice for each MP; reading this and extracting the relevant information about the purchase, if listed, then summarising this in the format requested in the question. In Financial Year 2020-21 there are 544 individual MPs listed with a total of approximately 2500 claim lines. IPSA estimates that the cost of carrying out this exercise is about 343 hours.

As for questions 3-8, if you could provide a list of MPs or particular claim references, we could check as to whether they were for desktop computers and Apple products.