Copies of receipts for claims made by Sarah Green MP

Chapter 7 of The Scheme of MPs' Staffing and Business Costs, deals with staffing costs.

7.1 Staffing costs may be claimed to meet the cost of staff who support MPs in performing their parliamentary functions. Throughout this chapter, ‘staff’ should be taken to include apprentices’ where those apprenticeships meet the standards of the National Apprenticeship Service; and ‘employed interns’, except where stated otherwise in paragraphs 7.9 and 7.10.

7.2 Nothing in this Scheme affects the MP's position as the employer of his or her staff.

7.3 The staffing budget may be used to meet the following costs:

a. staff salaries, employers' contributions to National Insurance and employers' contributions to pension schemes;

b. payments for pooled staffing services, which provide research, briefing and drafting services to groups of MPs, and have an arrangement with IPSA in place;

c. payments for bought-in services, where staffing services are provided by companies, self- employed individuals and others not on the MP’s payroll;

d. overtime payments, to the extent that these are specified in staff terms and conditions;

e. payments for childcare vouchers for staff, cycle-to-work schemes, or other payments by way of salary sacrifice;

f. reward and recognition payments, except where the employee is a connected party;

g. one-off health and welfare costs associated with provision of staffing support, such as eyesight tests and occupational health assessments;

h. costs associated with apprenticeships that meet the standards of the National Apprenticeship Service;

i. the incidental expenses of volunteers;

j. staff training costs (which may also be claimed from the office costs budget).

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Some information has been redacted from the documents and is subject to a Refusal Notice under sections 31 and 40 of the FOIA and in accordance with Section C of IPSA’s Publication Policy .

Section 31(1)(a ) – law enforcement

This exemption applies where the disclosure of information would or would be likely to prejudice the prevention of crime. IPSA relies on this exemption to withhold the banking details and other transactional references.

This exemption is subject to the public interest test. IPSA understands how disclosure of information under the FOIA promotes accountability and transparency in the spending of public money, allows the public to understand the work of MPs and furthers public understanding. However IPSA believes that the disclosure of these details could leave those concerned more vulnerable to financial crime, in particular fraud and electronic crime, especially with the increase in cyber attacks. IPSA does not consider that the withholding of this information has a negative impact on the understanding of these claims. We therefore find that the public interest in withholding this information outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this time.

Sections 40(2) and 40(3A)(a) – personal information

This exemption applies to information which IPSA considers to be personal data within the meaning of Article 4(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (UK GDPR) which states:

‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly .

IPSA considers that the following are personal data within this definition: names and other identifiers of suppliers' staff. We then considered whether disclosure of this personal data would breach any of the Principles relating to the processing of personal data in the UK GDPR.

The relevant principle is Article 5(1)(a):

Personal data shall be:

a. Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject

As IPSA was unable to find a lawful basis on which it could rely, within Article 6(1) of the UK GDPR, it therefore finds that the information is exempt under section 40.