Invoice for consultants and a TV claimed by Simon Danczuk MP

Under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), claims for reimbursement must be supported by evidence. As such, we hold all supporting documentation provided in support of claims made by MPs. You can view a copy of the Scheme on our website via this link.

The following information relating to these claims has already been published on our publication website.

Download the invoices referred to above.

Exemptions applied

Section 31 – law enforcement

We have withheld information relating to the financial transactions 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.

Section 40 – personal information

Information relating to living, identifiable individuals is ‘personal data’, as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if disclosure would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the DPA, where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. As such, we have withheld instances of personal data from the invoices, including the name and personal address of an individual providing professional services to the MP as a sole trader, alongside other personal data contained on the documents. You can find out more information about personal data and FOI via guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on their website: http://ico.org.uk.