Information about staffing in office of Craig Whittaker, MP

I can confirm that we hold information relevant to your request. Some of the information you have requested is subject to a refusal notice under FOIA s.40.

Information about staffing is available from the section MPs’ Staffing and Business Costs on our website by using the A-Z list.

Craig Whittaker's office page.

Job roles and working hours per week

On the MP's page scroll down to 'Other financial information'. Staffing costs are listed under 'Other staff information' where you will find a list of the job titles of staff working for the MP, whether they are on part-time or full-time contracts, and whether they have been employed for all or part of the year in question.

‘Connected party payroll information’ (also in the ‘Other financial information’ section) gives the same information for any connected parties working for the MP and the salary received within a £5,000 band. ‘Connected parties’ is a term we use for immediate members of MPs’ families and business partners with whom they share significant interests.

As some of the information you have requested is already available on our website, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to applicant by other means).

This means that we do not need to provide you with copies of the information you have asked for which is published on our website.

As only a small number of people are employed by the MP and they work in a public-facing role, it is likely that it would be possible to associate working patterns with identifiable individuals.

Information about actual hours worked each week has, therefore, been withheld under FOIA s.40 as it comprises the personal data of identifiable individuals. Information about FOIA s.40 is provided below.

Annual gross salaries

Total payroll costs for the MP are available by selecting the option to download ‘All claim data’ and filtering the spreadsheet for ‘Staffing’ [column G] and ‘Payroll’ [column H]. For example, for Craig Whittaker MP the costs for the last three years are:

• 2020-21: £168,742.50

• 2019-20: £144,507.60

• 2018-19: £138,383.50

Although IPSA does not disclose actual salary details for individuals, salary bands and job descriptions are published on our website at MP Staff JDs spreadsheet 2022-23. As the work of a staff member is public-facing and given the low number of staff employed by the MP, it would be possible to deduce the salaries and working patterns of identifiable individuals. Information about the actual salaries earned by staff is, therefore, subject to a refusal notice under FOIA s.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: salaries earned by individuals holding each job role and weekly hours worked by individuals in each job role.

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.