MSPs’ expense claims: Data Protection Registrar

After looking at how MSPs were claiming expenses for their websites, I decided to see if there were any other interesting facts to be gleamed from the MSP Allowances search form.

One of the categories they can claim for is Data Protection Registration, and reassuringly, 94 claims were made for this in financial year 2007-2008. I say claims, because only 93 MSPs claimed but Bill Wilson claimed twice, in February 2007 and November 2007. I’m not entirely sure how a claim for February 2007 can appear in results for a financial year that started in April 2007.

However there are 129 MSPs, which means 36 didn’t claim for this expense. When you register as a Data Controller, you have to pay £35 annually. So those 36 MSPs haven’t registered, or have incorrectly claimed the £35 expense in a different category, or have paid the fee but just not claimed for it.

So, can we find out which MSPs haven’t registered with the Information Commissioner?

Conveniently, the ICO has a search form for the Data Protection Public Register. Typing in MSP will give you almost 80 names straight away. To find the rest it’s a case of plugging in the names. Some have variations on how they’ve spelled their name, but eventually I got down to a list of eight names I couldn’t find:

Name	Party	Constituency
Andy Kerr	Labour Party	East Kilbride
Bruce Crawford	Scottish National Party	Stirling
Elizabeth Smith	Conservative	Mid Scotland and Fife
Jim Mather	Scottish National Party	Argyll and Bute
Joe Fitzpatrick	Scottish National Party	Dundee West
Margaret Curran	Labour Party	Glasgow Baillieston
Nicola Sturgeon	Scottish National Party	Glasgow Govan
Nigel Don	Scottish National Party	North East Scotland

It might be that these MSPs have registered under a different name that I’ve not searched for, or there’s been a typo when the details have been entered into the system.

Let’s cross-check those eight names against the list of names who claimed expenses, and see which of those eight have claimed:

• Andy Kerr, January 2008
• Bruce Crawford, November 2007
• Elizabeth Smith, January 2008
• Joe Fitzpatrick, October 2007
• Margaret Curran, January 2008
• Nicola Sturgeon, June 2007
• Nigel Don, October 2007

So they all claimed except for Jim Mather. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are correctly registered with the ICO, and for some reason I’m just not having any luck finding them on the Data Protection Public Register.

MSPs, MPs, MEPs and Councillors are basically obliged to register as Data Controllers. Some information I’ve found on the ICO site confirms this:

Organisations or individuals that process personal information covered by the Act may need to notify the Commissioner about their processing. A description of the processing activities is placed on a public register of notifications. These organisations or individuals must also comply with eight data protection principles which together form a framework for the proper handling of personal information. Individuals whose personal information is processed have rights under the Act, for example, to a copy of the information that is held about them.
…
When elected members represent residents of their ward, they are likely to have to notify in their own right, for example, if they use personal information to timetable surgery appointments or take forward complaints made by local residents.
…
The Data Protection Act contains a number of criminal offences including:
When someone is required to notify and does not do so. For example, a councillor who holds computerised records of constituents’ details for casework purposes, would commit an offence if they had not notified this use of personal information.

Someone should be checking these eight MSPs to make sure they have been correctly registered with the ICO. If you are a constituent of any of these MSPs, you might want to use the excellent WriteToThem.com to ask your MSP what name they have registered with the Information Commissioner.

MPs’ expenses

Members of Parliament make a basic salary of £63,291. Some of them get paid additional salary for other responsibilities, e.g. if they are a government minister. For instance, here’s a few salaries:

• £194,250 Prime Minister
• £141,866 Cabinet Minister
• £141,866 Speaker
• £77,330 Select Committee Chair

On top of that, they get pretty much all their expenses paid for. For instance they can claim up to:

• £100,205 staffing allowance (often with family members being paid from this)
• £22,193 incidental expenses
• £24,006 additional living costs, e.g. for staying away from home while attending parliament
• £10,400 communication allowance
• generous travel expenses

Also, when an MP leaves the commons at a general election, they get a lump sum of between 50% and 100% of their annual salary. I’m not sure if this applies to those that lose their seats, or just to those that stand down, but I’m guessing both.

So in total they get a very healthy amount of money from the taxpayer every year. As do MSPs, MEPs and Councillors.

However, they are very secretive about revealing their expenses. There have been several Freedom Of Information requests in the last few years trying to get MPs to reveal exactly what they’re claiming expenses for. After going all the way to the High Court trying to fight against the Information Commissioner’s decision, they’re now about to decide whether to exempt themselves from having to do just that.

This exemption will prevent us discovering exactly what it is MPs are spending their expenses on. For instance, under FOI requests that have already been published, we discovered that Margaret Beckett claimed £1,920 for plants, Barbara Follett claimed £1,600 for window cleaning and Tony Blair claimed £10,000 for refurbishing his kitchen.

Parliament has already spent about a million pounds preparing for making expense claims public, (mostly scanning receipts by the sounds of things) but all that money, time and effort is going to be wasted. MPs vote on Harriet Harman’s proposal on Thursday 22nd. This will be going against High Court ruling that their expense receipts should be published.

Things you can do right now:

• Join the Facebook group and invite your contacts to also join.
• Write to your MP asking them to vote against this.
• Write to your local newspapers to complain.

Some links to find out more:

• My Society
  • 6 days to stop MPs concealing their expenses
• Daily Mail
  • Taxpayers foot £1m bill for publication of expenses but MPs STILL want to cover them up
• Guardian
  • Government exempts MPs’ expenses from freedom of information
  • MPs to be exempt from publishing expenses
  • Ministers face anger over plan to exempt MPs’ expenses from freedom of information
  • Freedom of information takes a battering
  • Expenses spared
  • Nothing to declare?
• The Times
  • MPs defy the judges to keep ‘John Lewis’ expenses list secret
• BBC
  • MPs’ expenses plan ‘outrageous’
  • So now we know …
  • Blair was chased over unpaid bill