Request for receipts/invoices for specified claims

IPSA holds the information you have requested.

Copies of the invoices requested are provided.

Please note that we have redacted some information from those receipts in accordance with our Publication Policy and under section 31 (Law enforcement) and section 40 (Personal data) of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Section 31 – Law Enforcement

Information relating to:

• Invoice numbers

• Personal bank account numbers

• Other sensitive financial information

This information has been withheld under section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOIA. This section of the Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOIA 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.

Section 40 – Personal data

Some of the invoice details relate to third parties and are ‘personal data’ as defined by data protection law. As such, we are unable to disclose this information. Section 40(2) of the FOIA provides that personal information about third parties is exempt information if disclosure would breach the fair processing principle, Article 5(10(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation, where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential.

We do not consider it within the reasonable expectations of third-party suppliers that their address details would be disclosed. As such, we do not consider that disclosure of address information would be fair, and are obliged to withhold it 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.

You can find out more information about personal data and the FOIA from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on their website.

This concludes our response to your request.