Details of expense claims made by the Prime Minister and an individual MP
Request
I’d like to request the expense claims from The Prime Minister from December’s general election.
I’d also like to see his expense claims for the duration of his time as Prime Minster.
I’d also like to see Sajid Javid’s expense claims from the election too.
Response
I can confirm that we hold information relevant to your request.
IPSA publishes all expense claims on its website, where they can be found by searching under an individual MP.
In the top right-hand corner, select the financial year you are interested in. Then select the ‘individual claims’ spreadsheet from the drop-down menu, and download the spreadsheet. This gives you access to the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet may be downloaded as a .csv file and saved as in Excel.
Specific categories of claims may be selected by using the filters on the top row or by searching the spreadsheet for specific terms.
Additionally, all MPs have a profile page with information about their expenses broken down into categories, for example, Travel > Own vehicle, etc. Clicking on the ‘i’ to the right of each entry opens a pop-up with more information.
The publication schedule is here.
The expense claims of the Prime Minister are therefore subject to Refusal Notice under section 21 of FOIA, because the information is reasonably accessible from the website.
This information is subject to a Refusal Notice under section 22 of FOIA. This exemption applies because the information is intended for future publication by IPSA as part of our routine publication schedule, which I referred to above. Section 22 is a qualified exemption and requires us to consider the public interest.
As IPSA is currently working to assist MPs with their work during the COVID-19 pandemic and because there is already has schedule of routinely publishing this information, I find that the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this time.
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- Ref:
- RFI-202001-4
- Disclosure:
- 15 May 2020
- Categories:
- GENERAL EXPENSES ENQUIRY
- Exemptions Applied: