Details of accommodation and staffing expenditure for Aiden Burley for 2011-2012

Mr Burley presently employs five members of staff, working both on a full time and part time basis, which equates to 3.75 full time equivalents.  Their roles are: Caseworker, Senior Caseworker, Senior Secretary and two Parliamentary Assistants.

Due to the Data Protection Act, individual names and salaries cannot be released as this would constitute personal information.  However, please visit the following link to our website that details IPSA salary pay ranges that MPs have to comply with when employing staff under the Expenses Scheme.  As stated, releasing details on individual’s salaries would be in breach of the Data Protection Act, however, to address your question on staff pay rises, IPSA reminds MPs when setting the pay for their staff that they should have regard to the terms of the public sector pay freeze.  IPSA have informed MPs that they do not expect to receive salary uplift requests for their staff, unless a significant increase in responsibilities has been taken on by the staff in question.

In response to the remaining part of your request, you can view Aidan Burley’s annual expenditure for the financial year 2010/2011 and the published data for the current year on our website.  There are two sets of data available on our website:

• An overview of an MP’s annual spend on each budget, without specific details on what they’ve claimed; and

• Detailed information on every expense claim an MP has made, searchable by MP, financial year and expense type

IPSA publishes details of expenses claims throughout the year in a two month cycle, three months in arrears.  Expenses claims for October and November 2011 were published on our website on 1 March 2012.  Expenses claims for December 2011 and January 2012 will be published on Thursday 10 May 2012.  Annual data for the financial year 2011/2012 will be published following the end of the current financial year.  This can be viewed by visiting the following link to our website.

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by other means or that is intended for future publication is not subject to release.  Therefore, as the information you have requested (relating to the second part of your request) is either already available on our website or will shortly be published on our website, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to applicant by other means) and under Section 22(1) of the FOIA (Information intended for future publication).

In reaching this conclusion, as required by the FOIA, we have considered whether the public interest in releasing the information outweighs the application of the exemption. It is our opinion that the public interest is best served by publishing the information at set dates, rather than on an ad hoc basis, as this way a clear and complete set of information is published, which should also avoid causing confusion.  It is for these stated reasons that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.