Details of expense claims made by Khalid Mahmood MP and Rebecca Long-Bailey MP

IPSA holds some of the information you requested.

Khalid Mahmood MP:

• 29 August 2018, £11.41, Payment to Supplier, August Commercial Invoice for stationary 

IPSA does not hold this information.

IPSA makes payments direct to a number of suppliers, including Commercial, Banner and XMA on behalf of the MP. This removes the need for the MP to pay, claim or provide evidence. In this regard, MPs do not need to send any receipts as IPSA will collect all the information required from the suppliers when the MP orders online. These costs will then be charged to the appropriate budget.

Rebecca Long Bailey MP 

• 1 November 2018, £280, 692947, quarterly payment of office photocopier lease 

The MP has entered into a hire agreement with the supplier, and payments are made in accordance with the agreed schedule, as opposed to individual invoices being submitted. We enclose the original hire purchase agreement for the equipment.

The receipts that we hold for the other requested information, and listed in the table below accompany this response. Please note that we have withheld a small amount of information from the receipts in accordance with s.31 FOIA (Law Enforcement). Further information on the application of this exemption can be found below.

Exemptions applied

Section 31 – Law enforcement

We have withheld invoice numbers and other sensitive financial information 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.

This concludes our response to your request.