1. law, govt and politics

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST – UPDATED RESPONSE (20 MAY 2015)
Reference Number:
FOI122
Date of disclosure:
20 May 2015
Request summary:
Receipts for 3 MPs' expense claims
Exemptions used:
Section 31, Section 40
NOTE: Following the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of the Independent Parliamentary
Standards Authority v The Information Commissioner & Anor, further information was provided in
response to the request. The original response, which was sent to the requestor in 2011, can be
found via this link. This is the updated response. (20 May 2015)
Request:
I would like to see the original receipts submitted by several MPs in support of expenses claims
during the period May-August 2010. IPSA has published details of the claims on its website, but
has not published the original receipts (despite the High Court ruling in May 2008 that the
disclosure of receipts was in the public interest.) The receipts I would like to see relate to the
claims: Claim Ref No. 11770 - John Bercow - £652.13 - "general admin" - "Website
design/production" - 01.07.2010 Claim Ref No 14434 - Alan Keen - £63.61 - "general admin" "stationery/banner" - 02.07.2010 Claim Ref No 14055 - George Osborne - £145.70 - "general
admin" - "headed paper" - 27.05.2010 Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need to clarify
any aspect of this request. Whilst I would prefer to see the original receipts in unredacted form, I
appreciate that elements may need to be redacted for security reasons.
Response:
I write with regard to your request for information, originally received by us on 9 December 2010,
relating to supporting evidence for three expense claims published on the IPSA website.
Your request, which was handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), was initially
answered by IPSA on 13 January 2011. I have enclosed a copy of our original response, for
reference, which is also available on our website, alongside all other responses to FOI requests we
have received.
In our original response, we provided the information from the original receipts in an extracted
format, as we believed this provided all recorded information and therefore ensured we were
meeting our responsibilities under the FOIA.
Following the decision of the Court of Appeal on 28 April 2015 in the case of the Independent
Parliamentary Standards Authority v The Information Commissioner & Anor, I attach, alongside this
letter, copies of the supporting evidence you originally requested.
John Bercow
Alan Keen
Amount
claimed (£)
652.13
63.61
George Osbourne
145.70
MP Name
Date
Details
01/07/2010 Website design/production
02/07/2010 stationery/banner
27/05/2010 headed paper
Link to receipt
Receipt
Receipt (front)
Receipt (back)
Receipt
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST – UPDATED RESPONSE (20 MAY 2015)
In keeping with our responsibilities under the FOIA, a small amount of information has been
withheld from the receipts and invoices. These include:
 invoices numbers;
 account numbers; and
 bank account details.
We have withheld these pieces of information under section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOI
Act. This section of the Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOI Act
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 full 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. On balance,
we believe the relative risk of disclosing account numbers and personal bank details significantly
outweighs any public interest in the full disclosure of the documents. Indeed, we contend that there
is a strong public interest in ensuring that as an organisation we are able to protect our service users
from the threat of criminal activity. This is achieved through our capacity to withhold certain
information from disclosure.
It is for this reason that we have decided that the application of the exemption outweighs the public
interest in disclosing the information.
Further, the personal address of one individual has been withheld under section 40 of the FOIA.
Section 40(2) provides that personal information about third parties is exempt information if one of
the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under the FOI Act disclosure of this information
would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), where
it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. For further information, you may wish to visit
the UK Legislation website.