Information about claims made by Laura Farris, MP

Mileage costs can only be claimed where a private car has been used. For hire cars, the cost of the hire plus fuel and any insurance costs can be claimed. As you will note from the published data, the mileage claims and car hire dates are not for the same days. Rules for travel-related claims are set out in ‘The Scheme of MPs’ Staffing and Business Costs’ (the Scheme). Chapter 9 of the Scheme provides information about Travel and subsistence costs.

I can confirm that we hold some information relevant to your request. We can confirm that reimbursements have been made for costs charged to the payment card for Ms Farris’ office.

However, costs which have not been claimed and a repayment made are not always necessarily for personal purchases.

Payment cards can be used to pay for business costs allowed under the Scheme. IPSA makes payments directly to the payment card supplier every month. We then provide MPs with a list of expenditure they incurred. MPs are required to account for this within 30 days and provide supporting evidence.

If an office marks the lines they didn't intend to claim as "not claimed", these are not published. If an office claims something and it is rejected by our validation process, then this is published.

If a cost has been reimbursed and marked as “not claimed” we would not necessarily know if this was for a personal purchase unless explicitly stated by the office. For example, an MP may have decided not to claim and to make repayment as the cost would take them over budget; they may only be claiming the portion of the cost that falls within our budget limits, for example, for train fares or hotels; or the MP has lost the supporting evidence, in which case the claim would not be passed for payment by our validation checks.

IPSA would, therefore, not know if the purchases were personal items unless explicitly informed by the MP that an item was, or was not, a personal purchase, as opposed to a claim reimbursed for other reasons.