All correspondence between IPSA and Liverpool MPs since IPSA was established

Request

Any correspondence, memos or reports between Merseyside MPs and IPSA since its inception.

For clarity, the following MPs: Rosie Cooper (West Lancs), John Pugh (Southport), Claire Curtis Thomas (formerly Crosby), Bill Esterson (Sefton Central), Joe Benton (Bootle), George Howarth (Knowsley), Maria Eagle (Garston Halewood), Luciana Berger (Wavertree), Steve Rotheram (Walton), Graham Evans (Weaver Vale), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Shaun Woodward (St Helens South),  Dave Watts (St Helens North), Angela Eagle (Wallasey), Derek Twigg (Halton), Helen Jones (Warrington North), Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston), Louise Ellman (Riverside), Esther McVey (Wirral West), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), David Mowat (Warrington South).

Response

I can confirm that IPSA holds some of the information that falls within the description specified in your request.

In order to extract the information you have requested it would be necessary to carry out a manual search of all letters contained within 650 paper files for MPs. In addition, IPSA deals with an average of 100 emails per day from MPs, their staff and members of the public.

We can advise that IPSA conducted a search of all e-mails relating to 5 MPs. For those 5 MPs, there was an average of 133 e-mails each. If we were to allow 30 seconds for searching for, extracting and printing each e-mail alone, for twenty MPs it would take approximately 22 hours of staff time to complete this task. Additional time would be required to search our correspondence files. It would therefore cost more than the appropriate limit to process your request.

The appropriate limit 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 of locating, retrieving and extracting it. Consequently, in accordance with section 12(1) of the FOIA, IPSA is not obliged to respond to your request.

Ref:
FOI2011-116
Disclosure:
25 January 2012
Categories:
CORRESPONDENCE
Exemptions Applied:
Cost limit