MPs' claims for business costs over the past 12 months

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

Some of the information you have requested is already available on our website. It is therefore exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA. Guidance on how to access this information is set out below.

A further proportion of the information you have requested is due to be published on our website as part of our routine publication schedule. It has therefore been withheld and is subject to a refusal notice under section 22(1) of the FOIA, and in accordance with Section C of IPSA’s Publication Policy. Information about our publication timetable is set out below.

That part of your request covering “supporting documentation” would require us to extract from our IT systems receipts and other evidence provided by MPs. Under section 12(1) of the FOIA, IPSA is not required to comply with a request for information if it estimates that the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit set by The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 (the Fees Regulations). We estimate that the cost of compliance would significantly exceed the appropriate limit.

Further information about these exemptions and their application, including the guidance on how to access the information you have requested on our website, is below.

Summary of IPSA’s publication arrangements

Given the nature of your request, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief outline of IPSA’s approach to publication.

IPSA publishes claims made by individual MPs every two months. To allow time for claims to be submitted, checked and validated, this happens in arrears, according to this timetable.

We also publish annual versions of this data, in spreadsheet format, which go back to 2010-11. The latest spreadsheet with this data is for 2022-2023 but in line with the timetable above, it currently only covers claims processed in the months of April to November 2022. It will be progressively updated as the bi-monthly cycle of publication progresses.

We also publish annual data on “Total spend”. In addition to individual claims, this includes the cost of MPs’ salaries and the amount they have spent on employing staff in their offices.

More detailed information about what we publish can be found in MPs’ staffing and business costs.

Section 21 – information accessible to applicant 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 it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA. This means that IPSA does not need to supply you with separate copies of this information but we do need to direct you to the place where it may be found.

As a first step, visit Annual budgets, costs and claims.

Scroll down and click on “Individual business costs”. The spreadsheet for 2022-23 covers the information you have requested for the period April to November 2022, with the exception of “any supporting documentation”. Note however that, as set out above, the data for 2022-23 is not for a complete year. This spreadsheet will be updated as and when the monthly bi-monthly publication cycle progresses.

The spreadsheets in this section of our website allow you to sort the available data in many different ways. For example, you explained that you were only interested in claims which were successfully reimbursed. If you go to Column U, which is headed “Status” and which holds information on whether a claim was Paid or Not Paid, you can easily use the “Sort” command to identify which claims which were not paid.

Section 22(1) – information intended for future publication

The information you have requested for the period December 2022 to April 2023 is, with the exception of “any supporting documentation”, due to be published over the next few months on our website in line with our routine publication timetable set out above. The information is therefore exempt from disclosure under FOIA section 22(1) and IPSA does not need to provide a copy under FOI legislation.

Section 22(1) is a qualified exemption and requires us to consider the public interest. MPs have a certain amount of time in which to submit their claims and once submitted there follows a period of validation and reconciliation before the information is ready for publication.

In light of the fact that IPSA is due to already has a schedule of routinely publishing this information, we find that the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this time.

Section 12(1) – cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

IPSA is not required to comply with a request for information if it estimates that the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit set by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 (the "Fees Regulations").

Under the Fees Regulations, a public authority can only take into account the time it reasonably expects to incur in the tasks set out in Regulation 4(3)(a)-(d) (the "Allowable Tasks"). For IPSA this is set at 18 hours or £450.

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

(a) Determining whether the information is held

(b) Locating the information, or a document containing it

(d) Retrieving the information, or a document containing it

(e) Extracting the information from a document containing it

As set out on our website, when making a claim, MPs are required to provide supporting evidence. In many cases, this is in the form of a receipt for a purchase.

Given the thousands of claim lines covered by your request, locating and retrieving this documentation would take us well in excess of 18 hours, which is over the appropriate limit. For this reason, that part of your request asking for any supporting documentation is refused under section 12(1) of the FOIA.

Please note however that, if you decide you would like to see supporting documentation for a smaller number of receipts, you are of course entitled to make a further request.