Employee timesheets submitted by Stephen Williams MP

IPSA holds the information that you request.

In IPSA’s view, the information you have requested is exempt under section 40(2) (personal information) of the FOIA, as the information contained on timesheets constitutes third party data.

Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under the FOI Act disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. Further information on the DPA can be found via this link to the UK legislation website.

In some circumstances, anonymised information may be provided for this type of request.  However, we believe that release of anonymised information extracted from timesheets may identify individuals and, therefore, be in breach of the DPA.  Please note that timesheets do not include descriptions of work carried out.  You may wish to view the sample job descriptions for outlines of the respective roles in MPs’ offices – these can be found via this link to the IPSA website.