Number of MPs from each party signed up to payroll giving in November 2015

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Under the terms of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, as amended by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, IPSA is required to pay MPs’ salaries. As such, MPs have no mechanism by which they can refuse to receive the recent salary increase and all MPs have been paid the full salary.

Once the full salary has been paid, MPs may choose to donate an amount to charity. This is a personal matter for the MP. There are, of course, many different ways of donating to charity, and we would not necessarily know if an MP was making donations to charity once they have received their salary.

As you note in your request, IPSA can make arrangements for payroll giving through the Charities Aid Foundation’s Give-As-You-Earn programme. Should an MP be interested, they need to complete the Foundation’s ‘Donor Instruction Form’ form on our website www.parliamentarystandards.org.uk. This needs to be signed then posted or emailed to IPSA’s address. Any donations made under this programme will be taken from an MP’s pay before tax but after National Insurance. According to our records, at the time of responding 19 MPs currently utilise this method, although this obviously does not reflect the total number of MPs who may choose to donate to charity.

The names of those MPs who have chosen to donate to charity through this method is personal information, as defined by the Data Protection Act. Section 40(2) of the FOIA provides that personal information about third parties is exempt information would disclosure 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.

However, we are able to confirm the parties of those who have chosen to engage the GAYE programme. This information can be found in the table below.

[1] We have withheld the exact name of the party under section 40 of the FOIA to protect the identity of the MP, where naming the party would identify the MP.