Claims made by Steve Double MP which include another individual

Under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses, MPs can claim for some expenditure incurred in the exercise of their parliamentary functions by staff members or dependants. A full copy of the Scheme, detailing exactly what can be claimed by individuals other than MPs themselves, can be found on our website.

All claims made by MPs for business costs and expenses are published on our website. Using the search function, you can search for claims which may involve third parties, such as staff travel, professional services or volunteer expenses. Claims are published every two months; you can find a schedule for when claims are due to be published on our website.

We also publish information relating to ‘connected parties’ employed by MPs, at the end of each financial year. This information can be found on our website.

The information that we hold relating to claims made by MPs is that provided to us by the MP on the online claims system and included on any supporting documentation. As such, we would not necessarily hold information on whether claims made by MPs involved other individuals. Information that is held on third parties is, under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998, their ‘personal data’, and is not necessarily disclosable under the FOIA.

In order to ascertain whether this information is held, we would be required to manually search through all claims made by the MP during the specified period, and inspect all items of supporting documentation. We estimate that to locate, retrieve and extract this information from our systems would take us over the appropriate cost limit of £450 (part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information Act). Consequently, IPSA is not obliged to respond to your request (see section 12(1), FOIA).