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.

MSPs’ expenses

There was a shameful attempt recently by the Government to try and cover up the detail of MPs’ expenses, which thankfully never happened. Coincidentally, today the Scottish Parliament published MSPs’ expenses.

The Scottish Parliament website has a pretty awful search interface to get details of all expenses claimed. Despite being a bad form, it does allow you to select from the various categories for Expenditure Type. One of the categories is "Website Costs". Here’s the figures for which MSPs claimed how much for their website, in the 2007-2008 financial year.

MSP	Website Costs
Charlie Gordon	£12822.62
John Wilson	£2291.25
Joe Fitzpatrick	£1500
Tavish Scott	£1315.50
George Foulkes	£1011.50
Wendy Alexander	£987.37
Karen Gillon	£940
Pauline Mcneill	£918
Claire Baker	£841.38
Kenny Macaskill	£556.38
Margaret Smith	£544.84
Malcolm Chisholm	£497.57
Alex Fergusson	£429.07
Kenneth Macintosh	£423
Bob Doris	£390
Jamie Hepburn	£360
Bashir Ahmad	£350
Michael Mcmahon	£303.55
Keith Brown	£300
Lewis Macdonald	£293.75
Michael Matheson	£273.69
Fergus Ewing	£252.64
Mike Pringle	£223.33
Jack Mcconnell	£211.32
Robert Brown	£200
Sandra White	£200
Bill Wilson	£200
Alex Neil	£190
Duncan Mcneil	£137.21
Karen Whitefield	£117.50
Tom Mccabe	£99.97
John Swinney	£98.86
Murdo Fraser	£76.38
Ted Brocklebank	£47
Derek Brownlee	£31.75
Stuart Mcmillan	£24.20

Sometimes it’s easier to understand things visually. Here’s a graph of just the top twenty names from the list above:

The most obvious thing you’ll notice is that Charlie Gordon (Labour) is paying over £10,000 more than the next highest for his website. The site’s not too bad, about what you might expect from a typical MP or MSP’s site; a little bit of Flash used for navigation, reasonable design, plenty of content. But is it worth paying more than £1000 a month for? I’m not so sure… however, the plot thickens.

Using the Scottish Parliament site, it is possible to see exactly what each individual expense is made out to. As has been reported today in The Herald and the Evening Times, Charlie Gordon hasn’t just been paying over the odds for his website; he’s been paying it to his son’s company!

He’s since added a statement to his news page, claiming "My website costs for 2007/08 were around £1,700; not £12,900 as stated erroneously on the Scottish Parliament’s website!" Of course, it must be the Parliament that’s made a mistake. I look forward to finding out how they were mistaken to the tune of £11,000!

Interestingly, only 36 out of 129 MSPs claimed expenses under the Website Costs category. Either the other 93 don’t have websites, or have them paid for by their party, or are claiming the expenses in a different category, or aren’t claiming the expenses for the website.

I expect some other interesting figures might be found from the MSPs’ expenses. It would be great if they could setup a proper API to query that data, so the likes of They Work For You could use the information. The same applies to when the MPs’ expenses finally get published.