Report submitted by the Compliance Officer to IPSA's Board in April 2013

IPSA holds the information that you have requested.

The report requested was presented to IPSA’s Board by the Compliance Officer for IPSA at the Board meeting of 24 April 2013.

Minutes of IPSA's Board meetings are published on our website and can be found here.

The Compliance Officer for IPSA is an independent office holder, responsible for:

1. Investigating complaints about MPs’ expenditure under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), and

2. Reviewing determinations by IPSA to refuse expense claims made by MPs under the Scheme.

The Compliance Officer is statutorily a separate public authority from IPSA under the terms of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 (as amended by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010). As an independent office holder, the Compliance Officer cannot be directed by IPSA’s Board, although he/she reports to the Board on work undertaken a bi-monthly basis.

Please click here to view a copy of the Board report requested.

Exemptions applied

Section 40 – personal information

We have redacted a small amount of personal data, including the names of junior staff members and the names of third parties, where appropriate. This information is ‘personal data’, as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). As such, we have withheld such information in accordance with section 40 of the FOIA. For reference, section 40(2) provides that personal information 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. 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.