Bulletin, 23 November (Supporting Democracy, annual publication, speaker's notice, ARA)
This week’s bulletin contains information about:
Supporting Democracy report
Annual publication 2022-23
Speaker's notice
Bi-monthly publication
Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23
Our phone lines will be closed on Friday 8 December for training.
If you have an urgent query that day, please email us and use the word "urgent" in the subject line.
Our normal phone service will resume on Monday 11 December.
Supporting Democracy report
Our Supporting Democracy report is designed to provide contextual information on the two key areas of MP expenditure – their staff and the running of their offices.
It provides an overview of our role in ensuring all spending is legitimate and tackles some common misunderstandings about our funding support for the democratic process.
Read Supporting democracy – funding of MP parliamentary duties 2022/23.
We have published a blog to accompany the report, Supporting democracy – understanding our 2022/23 data.
Annual publication 2022-23
Today we have published figures for business costs incurred by MPs for their parliamentary duties in the 2022-23 financial year.
IPSA Chair, Richard Lloyd said:
“Transparency is an essential part of supporting trust in democracy, and this is why since IPSA’s creation we have published information about the financial support we provide to MPs in carrying out their parliamentary duties.”
“Transparency must, however, be meaningful. There are many myths and misconceptions about MP expenditure that threaten to undermine confidence in democracy and as the regulatory body, we think it is important that we better explain and contextualise the funds we provide”.
This is the main spending breakdown for 2022-23:
You can access this information by visiting MPs’ staffing and business costs.
Speaker's notice
As referenced in the Speaker's security notice on Monday 20 November, we have agreed:
to temporarily relax the rules around IPSA-funded travel so MPs can make use of taxis to and from Parliament or constituency offices, where you feel this is necessary in the current circumstances
that details of these individual journeys will also not be published given the security implications
In addition, we have agreed that the publication approach for travel costs currently used for MPs from Northern Ireland – namely annual publication of the total costs, but not the details of the journeys themselves – will be extended to all MPs.
You will see that travel information does not appear in the June/July bimonthly data as a result of this change.
Bi-monthly publication
We have also published the most recent figures for business costs incurred by MPs in June and July 2023. This is the latest in our routine bi-monthly publication of MPs’ business costs.
The next publication is due on Thursday 18 January 2024.
For more information, visit MPs’ staffing and business costs.
Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23
Today we published our Annual Report and Accounts for the 2022-23 financial year.
The Annual Report and Accounts are the result of a collective effort between MPs, MPs' staff and IPSA. Thank you for your work around year-end as this enables us to produce accurate accounts to be laid in Parliament.