Staffing costs for Zac Goldsmith

Request

I am trying to establish some details about the publicly-funded staffing costs of a former Member of Parliament, Zac Goldsmith. I have been advised by the House of Commons Information Office that IPSA might be able to help with this query.

Can you please tell me if you have any information showing whether Mr Goldsmith employed a campaign and marketing director at public expense between September 2010 and February 2011? If the salary of the individual who occupied that post is publicly known, can you please tell me how much they were paid?

Any information relating to the above would be gratefully received. This request is being made on the assumption that Mr Goldsmith did have to declare his use of public money to cover all of his publicly-funded staffing costs and that this information was, at some point, published. If I am wrong about this, I would appreciate your telling me.

In the event that you cannot provide the information requested, can you please provide all known details regarding Mr Goldsmith's publicly-funded staffing costs at that time.

Response

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

IPSA publishes details of MPs’ business costs on the ‘MPs’ staffing and business costs ’pages of our website. The ‘Annual budgets, costs and claims’ link provides information about business costs claimed by all MPs, which you can download as a spreadsheet.

To find out about staffing costs, use the A-Z list to search by the MP’s name. Details for Zac Goldsmith are published here. The total staffing budget is provided in the first section, ‘Business Costs’.

For details of posts employed in any one year, go to ‘Other Financial Information’, select the year you are interested in and then select ‘Other staff information’. This will open a list of the job titles and contract type of staff employed during that year.

As this information is already publicly available, it is subject to a refusal notice under FOIA section 21. This means that we do not need to provide you with a copy of the information with this letter.

Please note that IPSA regulates and provides financial support to MPs to carry out their parliamentary function; we do not regulate o fund campaigning activities.

These are regulated by the Electoral Commission. Information about campaign finance and fundraising is available from the Commission’s website.

Ref:
RFI-202111-26
Disclosure:
1 December 2021
Categories:
MPs' STAFFING
Exemptions Applied:
SECTION 21