Employment details and salaries of connected parties employed by MPs

Request

  1. A breakdown of pay for connected parties showing for each one what proportion was earned from overtime

  2. Whether each connected party was based in London or elsewhere

  3. When the employment of each connected party commenced


Response

IPSA holds the information that you request.

For background reference, under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), Staffing Expenditure may only be claimed for the salary of one employee who is a connected party, unless an MP employed more than one connected party on 7 May 2010. You can find a full copy of the Scheme on our website, by following this link.

For the purposes of the Scheme, a connected party is defined as:

  1. a spouse, civil partner or cohabiting partner of the member;

  2. parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece of the member or of a spouse, civil partner or cohabiting partner of the member; or

  3. a body corporate, a firm or a trust with which the MP is connected as defined in section 252 of the Companies Act 2006.

As you will be aware, we publish the names of all connected parties (as well as their job title and salary range) on our publication website at the following address: http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/AnnualisedData.aspx. To find this information, please select the relevant financial year, then select ‘Other data’. This is in line with our stated publication policy, which was put in place following a public consultation.

Specific information relating individuals’ salaries, working location and contractual terms (including overtime entitlement) is each connected party’s personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act. Section 40(2) of the FOIA 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. The personal information we already actively publish on connected parties’ employment strikes a balance between the rights and freedoms of the connected parties with the legitimate interests of the public. We believe the disclosure of more intrusive details relating to the working and personal lives of connected parties would be both unfair and unlawful to the individuals concerned.

Ref:
CAS-30669
Disclosure:
15 October 2015
Categories:
MPs' CONNECTED PARTIES
Exemptions Applied:
Section 40