Copy of an invoice submitted by Esther McVey for office costs
Request
Under a FOI request could I ask for a copy of the invoice provided by former MP Esther McVey on claim number 407807 to the value of £191.88
Response
IPSA holds the information that you request.
As you will be aware, we publish details of all claims made by MPs under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’) on our publication website.
You can view a copy of the Scheme on our website.
Paragraph 1.1 of the Scheme states that all claims for reimbursement under the Scheme must be supported by evidence. Under Chapter Six of the Scheme, Office Costs Expenditure (OCE) is provided to meet the costs of equipping an MP’s office, where the costs are incurred in the exercise of an MP’s parliamentary functions.
We have withheld a small amount of information, such as account numbers, under Section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOI Act. This section of the Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOI Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention (or detection) or crime. After considering the nature of the withheld information it is our opinion that were a disclosure to be made into the public domain it is probable that this information could be traced back to sensitive personal or commercial information which could be used for criminal activity. Although we recognise the public interest in transparency surrounding the publishing of information relating to MPs’ expenses there is also a strong public interest in ensuring that we are able to protect our service users from the threat of being subjected to criminal activity. In our opinion the public interest in protecting the security of MPs’ and their property outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.
We have also withheld a small amount of personal data under section 40(2) of the FOIA. Section 40(2) provides that personal information 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. For further information, you may wish to visit the UK Legislation website.
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- Ref:
- CAS-22650
- Disclosure:
- 30 July 2015
- Categories:
- COPIES OF RECEIPTS/INVOICES
- Exemptions Applied:
- Section 31