Information on the rules for claiming fuel for vehicles

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

IPSA was established in 2009 by the Parliamentary Standards Act. The Act set out three main responsibilities:

• to regulate MPs' staffing and business costs

• to determine MPs' pay and pension arrangements

• to provide financial support to MPs in carrying out their parliamentary functions

IPSA, therefore, only holds information relating to business costs incurred as part of an MP’s parliamentary function.

We do not hold details of rules relating to ministerial duties – these are set out in the Ministerial Code of Conduct.

Rules for travel by ministers are addressed in section 10 of the Code.

You may be able to obtain general information about the rules applicable to all members of specific departments by contacting individual ministerial departments.

You can access a list of all ministerial departments on the gov.uk website.

1. Rules covering government ministers filling up someone else's car and trying to claim this back on expenses.

This information is not held by IPSA. IPSA does not hold information governing claims made by government ministers in the course of their ministerial duties, nor does IPSA hold rules specifically relating to an MP filling up someone else's car and claiming this on expenses.

The "Scheme of MPs' Staffing and Business Costs" sets out fundamental principles and rules under which MPs must operate when submitting claims for business costs and what they may claim for.

Chapter 9 of the Scheme sets out rules for travel, which includes claims relating to the use of private transport (paragraphs 9.18 to 9.19), taxis (9.20 to 9.21) and hire cars (9.22).

2. The policy which covers how you would know whether the vehicle fuel receipts given to you actually represent fuel for ministers own vehicles (as opposed to fuel for cars of random people).

This information is not held by IPSA. IPSA does not have policies governing claims by ministers other than in their work as MPs, nor does IPSA have a specific policy setting out how to link fuel receipts to the owners of specific vehicles.

We publish information about our validation process and assurance reviews.

The following exemption has been applied: section 21 of the FOIA

Section 21 – reasonably accessible by other means

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by means other than through a freedom of information request is not subject to release.

Therefore, as some of the information you have requested is already available on our website, or in the public domain, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA.