Receipts for claims made by Nick Clegg

IPSA releases details about MPs’ expense claims paid under the new, independent regime on IPSA’s dedicated publication website www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk as a matter of routine. The first tranche of expense claims, covering claims processed from 7 May to 31 August, were published on the 2 December 2010. In this period of time, Mr Nick Clegg MP did not submit any expense claims to be processed.

Details of any expense claims submitted by Mr Clegg and processed in September and October 2010 will be published on the IPSA website on Thursday 3 February 2011. Claims processed in November and December 2010 will be published on Thursday 7 April 2011. Details of any claims not paid by IPSA for Mr Clegg will also be published on these dates. Therefore, in IPSA’s view, the information you have requested is exempt under Section 22 of the FOIA (Information intended for future publication).

IPSA will not, as a matter of course, publish images of receipts or invoices supporting claims. We believe that the information we publish provides a significant amount of detail and gives a clear picture of what MPs are claiming for and affords reassurance that claims are both appropriate for MPs to carry out their parliamentary functions, and in accordance with the rules set out in the MPs’ Expenses Scheme.

The appropriate cost limit for responding to a Freedom of Information request is set at £450 (Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the FOIA). This represents the estimated cost of determining whether IPSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. We have estimated that it will take more than 18 hours to collect and extract the information you have requested which is above the cost limit. Consequently, IPSA is not obliged by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to respond to your request (see section 12(1)).

If you wish to seek further information contained on supporting evidence submitted by Mr Clegg for any specific expense claims once the next tranche of claims are published, we would be happy to consider your request again.