Copies of invoices for claims made by Mr Ross Thomson MP

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), the Office Costs budget is provided to meet the costs of renting, equipping and running MPs’ constituency offices. This includes the costs associated with the provision of IT services.

Please note, we have redacted payment information from the receipts under section 31 FOIA (Law Enforcement) and section 40 FOIA (Personal Information). More information on this exemption can be found below.

Exemptions applied

Section 31

Section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOIA 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 financial security of staff and volunteers engaged by MPs outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Section 40

Information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person is ‘personal data’, as defined by the General Data Protection Principle (GDPR).

Section 40(2) of the FOIA provides that personal information is exempt information if:

(a) it constitutes personal data; and

(b) the condition set out in s. 40(3A)(a) of FOIA is satisfied, namely that disclosure to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles in the GDPR.

In our view (a) is satisfied because the information sought by you relates to an identifiable, living individual, and (b) is also satisfied because disclosure would breach the first data protection principle in Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR, which requires that personal information is processed fairly, lawfully and in a transparent manner; processing includes disclosure.

In relation to fairness, IPSA is required to process personal data in a manner in which people, including MPs and their staff, would reasonably expect.

We do not consider it within the reasonable expectations of the named individuals to disclose their personal information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. As such, we are obliged to withhold their information from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA.

This part of the section 40 exemption is an absolute exemption and so no consideration of public interest arguments for and against disclosure is required.

This concludes our response to your request.