Connected parties employed by MPs

Request

  1. The total number of MPs employing connected parties up to the date this request was received.

  2. The total number of connected parties employed by MPs

  3. The total annual salary paid to the connected parties

  4. The total cost of employing the connected parties including all benefits, including national insurance and pension contributions

  5. Please can you give me a breakdown of the above information from the previous ten years - ie. how does the latest information compare to the last 10 years?

Response

For reference, IPSA was established in May 2010, and does not hold any information prior to this date.

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.

You may be aware that as part of our annual publication of each MP’s expenditure over the financial year, we publish details of connected parties employed by MPs. This information includes the names of any connected party employed by an MP, their job titles, working arrangement and salary band. The 2016-17 annual aggregate of MPs’ business costs and expenses will be published following the end of the financial year. Data for previous year can be found on our website via this link[1].

At the time of responding, 151 connected parties were employed by 151 MPs. The total annual sum of these employees’ gross pay is £3,049,124.69. Including on-costs, the annual sum is £3,636,512.10.

Last year, we conducted an assurance review of the employment of connected parties by MPs. You can find a copy of that report on our website here. At page 32 of the report, you can find an annual comparison of connected party numbers and salary costs, which is included below for ease.

March 2011March 2012March 2013March 2014March 2015March 2016
Number of Connected Parties126144149158150139
Salary Costs£296,800£329,600£360,600£382,000£372,200£348,300

By way of comparison, total salary costs for connected parties in January 2017 was £368,000.

[1] You will need to select the option for ‘other data’ on the drop down menu for the financial year you are seeking.

Ref:
CAS-72589
Disclosure:
9 March 2017
Categories:
MPs' STAFFINGMPs' CONNECTED PARTIES
Exemptions Applied:
None