Details of repayments for accommodation budget overspends incurred by MPs in 2013-14 and 2014-15

Request

Details of repayments for accommodation budgets overspends incurred by MPs in 2013-14 and 2014-15, including:

  • whether overspend was repaid

  • financial year in which it was repaid

  • whether the debt is still outstanding or has been written off


Response

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), MPs are provided with various budgets to support them in the exercise of their parliamentary functions. MPs who overspend their budget are required to repay this amount to IPSA.

At the end of each financial year, we publish the total amount MPs have claimed from each budget, alongside the total budget to which they were entitled. Any outstanding overspend can be identified by calculating the difference between these figures.

Details of all repayments, including those for budget overspends, are published on our website following the end of the financial year. Please note: we occasionally make minor amendments to historically published data if, for example, we identify claims that have been allocated to the incorrect budget, so the data currently on our website provides the most up-to-date figures.

Overspends incurred in 2014-15

All overspends incurred in 2014-15 have been repaid in full. Details relating to the date of those repayments can be found below.

MP NameFinancial year in which final repayment made
Ben Gummer2017-18
Meg Munn2015-16
Ian Murray2015-16
Ian Paisley2016-17
Hugh Robertson2015-16
Mike Weir2015-16

Overspends incurred in 2013-14

Our current process for managing debt and amounts due for repayment was introduced in the 2014-15 financial year and so our records for overspends incurred prior to this date are not centrally logged. The current status of MPs’ 2013-14 budgets including details of any repayments received can be found on our website.

Additional contexts for MPs named in your request can be found below.

The following MPs, with our agreement, offset their 2013-14 accommodation overspends by reducing spend in their 2014-15 budgets.

  • Andrew Robathan

  • Chris Pincher

  • Chris Ruane

  • Dawn Primarolo

  • Graham Jones

  • Hugh Robertson

  • Ian Liddell-Grainger

  • Ian Murray

  • Ian Paisley

  • Jonathan Evans

  • Laurence Robertson

  • Mark Pritchard

  • Peter Bone

  • Peter Hain

  • Philip Davies

  • Tracey Crouch

Details of repayments received for overspends incurred in 2013-14 can be found below.

MP NameFinancial year in which final repayment made
Alec Shelbrooke2014-15
Alison McGovern2014-15

Other MPs have had costs re-allocated since the 2013-14 data was originally published and as such did not incur budget overspends in 2013-14. These are usually the result of minor administrative errors, such as uncapped hotel costs being claimed from the capped accommodation budget, or accommodation costs incurred by a departing MP being allocated to the accommodation budget rather than the winding-up budget.

Similarly, to ensure correct accounting, our publication and validation team have occasionally undertaken reconciliation exercises of historic claims which may result in costs being retrospectively allocated to different budgets. This can cause minor overspends to appear to certain budgets retrospectively, repayment for which we did not pursue.

Ref:
CAS-122360
Disclosure:
12 September 2018
Categories:
DEBT
Exemptions Applied:
None