Emily Thornberry MP's office expenses

IPSA holds some of the information that you request.

Members of Parliament are permitted, under the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), to claim for expenses legitimately incurred whilst carrying out their parliamentary duties, which includes the costs of running an office in two locations.  You can view the Scheme via this link to our website.

You may be aware that IPSA publishes all claims for business costs and expenses on our website every two months, three months in arrears.  You can view the published information via this link to our publication website.  However, we do not require Members to specify which office the cost was incurred at, and we are not therefore able to separately identify all costs incurred at the constituency office from those incurred at the parliamentary office.    

For your reference, the next publication date is 10 January 2013, which will cover those claims processed by IPSA during August to September 2013.  Claims subsequently processed by IPSA will follow in future publications.

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by other means is not subject to release. Therefore, as 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).

Some of the information you have requested is intended for publication at a future date.  Section 22(1) of the FOIA states that information intended for future publication is exempt from release.

We have considered whether the public interest in releasing the information outweighs the application of the exemption. It is our opinion that the public interest is best served by publishing a full list rather than on an ad hoc basis, as in this way a clear and complete set of information is published, avoiding any potential confusion. It is for this reason that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this stage.