Details of average security costs broken down by gender and ethnicity for 2014-19

I can confirm that we hold some information relevant to your request relating to security costs by gender. We do not hold or collect information relating to the ethnicity of MPs.

The Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs & Expenses has a section which covers the Security Assistance available to MPs.

Security Assistance is divided into two categories: recommended measures and further measure.

The first category relates to measures recommended by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. These measures can be installed by the approved contractor, Chubb, and IPSA will make payment directly. If an MP chooses not to use Chubb, then they must submit an application for approval before going ahead with another supplier. This expense will then be claimed via the process listed in the Scheme, in the usual way.

The second category relates to further measures which an individual MP may require because they have been recommended by the police or the Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team.

There are also routine security measures which may be required for an office and which are claimed from either the office or accommodation budgets.

In terms of your request, I am sorry that, at the time, clarification was not sought and that you were not provided with further information about the types of security available.

In order to provide information on both costs related to recommended measures and further measures, it would be necessary to go into two separate databases as the payments are dealt with differently. We would need to extract the relevant information from these systems and then check the gender of the MP. In addition, you have requested this information from the financial year 2014-15.

At this point, I must issue you with a Refusal Notice under section 12(1) of FOIA. This exemption applies because we estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit as laid down in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. For IPSA this amount is £450 or 18 hours.

If you still require this information, based on my explanation above, you may want to make a new more specific request. In addition, IPSA publishes the total claimed by MPs from the security assistance budget on an annual basis.