Details of expense claims made by Esther McVey MP

IPSA holds the information you requested.

Professional services

Under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), claims for reimbursement must be supported by evidence. As such, we hold all supporting documentation provided in support of claims made by MPs.

Under the Scheme, Staffing or Office Costs can be claimed for payments for bought-in services (‘professional services’), where services are provided by companies, self-employed individuals or others not on the payroll.

As you will be aware, details of all claims made by MPs are published on our website every two months. The following details relating to claims by Esther McVey for professional services have already been published.

The invoices requested accompany this response.

MPs’ travel

Under the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’), travel and subsistence claims may be made for the costs of travel, and travel-related subsistence incurred by MPs or others, which are in support of the MP’s parliamentary functions. Since April 2017, this has included claims for journeys by MPs’ spouses and partners between the MP’s constituency and London.

The following details relate to travel claims made by Esther McVey.

The invoices requested accompany this response.

Please note that certain information has been withheld from disclosure in accordance with s.31 FOIA (Law Enforcement) and s.40 FOIA (Personal Information). Further information on the application of these exemptions can be found below.

Exemptions applied

Section 31 – Law Enforcement

Information relating to:

• invoice numbers

• personal bank account numbers

• other sensitive financial information

has been withheld 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 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 information

Personal addresses of third-parties

Some details relating to third parties are ‘personal data’, as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 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 (Principle 1) of the GDPR, where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. You can find out more information about personal data and FOI via guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on their website.

This is an absolute exemption and as such is not subject to a public interest test.

This concludes our response to your request.