Receipts for bought in services

I acknowledge your request for information which was received on 18 August 2021.

You asked if your request was too broad in scope and I knew from the wording that it would be.

It will help if I explain a little about our systems and the claims process.

Prior to 2019, IPSA was using a different system for processing claims to the one we use now. The search and retrieval of information from this legacy system is not as straightforward as from our current system. With the exception of suppliers who IPSA pays directly, we cannot run a report to retrieve all those who fall under a specific category; this includes those caught by the category of bought-in services. This is because IPSA is not required to set up a payment arrangement with these suppliers. This means that the only way of knowing the name of the supplier is by retrieving the evidence for each claim, checking this and extracting relevant information.

I did a basic investigation using the individual expenses data for 2020-21 published on our website. Under the category of bought-in services, there are 349 unique MPs with a total of 1760 individual claim lines. There are 4 subcategories, below bought-in services: Administrative services; Office services; Parliamentary accountancy; Professional & consultancy, however, an MP can categorise a claim to whichever they feel is applicable.

Although it would not assist in reducing the time to process the request, I would also need to clarify the type of supplier you are interested in. Does your request refer to companies, sole traders and other trading bodies? I would also have explained that IPSA’s financial year runs from 01 April to 31 March the following year.

To provide the information as you have requested it, for the year 2020-21, we estimate would take about 230 hours, based on 1760 individual claims from our current system.

I hope this information helps if you consider submitting a revised request.