Roger Godsiff MP's business costs

I can confirm that we hold some information relevant to your request. However, IPSA does not hold invoices relating to these costs, as they relate to the MP’s staff payroll and individual payslips.

Miscellaneous/Redundancy: £77,207.52

When an MP stands down or loses his or her seat at an election, their staff are made redundant.

In such instances, staff members are entitled to redundancy payments in line with the terms specified in their employment contracts.

The redundancy amounts are provided to us by the MP’s office in individual letters to staff members.

The amounts are calculated based on age, weekly salary, and length of service.

As the letters contain details of individual payments to each staff member, this is classed as personal information exempt from disclosure under section 40 of the FOIA.

Staffing/Payroll: £107,083.18

This represents the annual expenditure on staff salaries.

Details of salaries for individuals are exempt from disclosure under section 40, personal data. However, IPSA does publish the job titles of staff employed by each MP and generic job descriptions.

A list of positions held by Mr Godsiff’s staff has been published on our website and may be viewed by selecting ‘Other staff information’ in the section headed ‘Other financial information’.

MPs’ staff job descriptions and pay bands are published on our website.

Winding Up/Payroll: £42,059.93

Winding-up costs are designed to meet the cost of completing the outstanding parliamentary functions of a person who ceases to be a Member of Parliament.

Winding-up costs are payable for two months after a person has ceased to be a Member.

The conditions which need to be met before any of these payments are made, and the basis for calculation, are set out in Chapter 8 of the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses’.

As the information you have requested relates to specific payroll details, this has been withheld from disclosure under FOIA section 40.

Sections 40(2) and 40(3A)(a) – personal data

This exemption applies to information which IPSA considers to be personal data within the meaning of Article 4(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (UK GDPR) which states:

‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly

IPSA considered that the following are personal data within this definition: salary and redundancy details of individual staff members. We then considered whether disclosure of this personal data would breach any of the Principles relating to the processing of personal data in the UK GDPR.

The relevant principle falls at Article 5(1)(a):

Personal data shall be:

a. Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject

As IPSA was unable to find a lawful basis on which it could rely, within Article 6 of the UK GDPR, it, therefore, finds that the information is exempt under section 40.