Guido can reveal IPSA has concluded that Labour‘s Chief Whip Sir Alan Campbell broke the rules by publishing a party political survey on his taxpayer-funded website. While the Standards Commissioner’s investigation isn’t yet complete, IPSA has privately declared that expenses “do not allow for surveys to be used in connection with party political purposes, which would include gathering data on people’s voting intentions”. Campbell soon deleted the data retrieved by the survey, although IPSA still gave him a slap on the wrist…

“There has been a breach of the rules, in that, the survey posted should not have included questions around voting intentions, whilst the cost of hosting the website was being claimed from IPSA. IPSA are in the process of arranging for the costs to be reimbursed – this will be hosting costs only for the period the survey was in place.”

Campbell insists the data was never shared with the Labour Party, and has vowed never to do it again. He still maintains the survey offered him no “campaigning advantage” whatsoever…

The IPSA has announced that the next batch of MP’s expenses will come on November 17, following the previously reported suspension. The initial justification, for delays to reports due in September, was the death of Queen Elizabeth. The period of mourning lasted 10 days, what’s their excuse for the next 6 weeks?

In the bulletin the IPSA also announced further reductions in the detail provided on expense claims, specifically to reporting taxi journeys and surgery venue costs. None of this will surprise co-conspirators. The IPSA has taken any excuse to delay and water-down the transprency of published expenses. In addition to MPs taking liberties with taxpayer funding, we now have to watch the body created to watch them…

Along with every other aspect of British life grinding to a halt following the death of the Queen, on 12 September IPSA announced it was delaying publication of MP business cost data out of respect to Her Majesty. It’s what she would have wanted…

Exactly two weeks on from its announcement, and a week on from the end of national mourning, IPSA is not only yet to publish the figures, it’s yet to announce a new date on which they will do so. Given it also stopped publishing MPs’ expenses data in light of Sir David Amess’s murder, Guido continues to believe the body responsible for publishing MPs’ expenses data is desperate for any excuse not to do their job…

The strikes are on, causing misery for millions of ordinary people, though thankfully the taxpayer’s pockets are once again being dipped into on behalf of MPs. Yesterday a letter went out from IPSA, the expenses body, noting “some concern” amongst MPs about the impact of the planned rail strikes, though reassuring them they have nothing to be scared of:

“where commuting to an office location is unavoidable, and you incur significant costs as a result (e.g. for a long taxi journey), you may consider applying for contingency funding.”

It’s also good news for MPs’ staffers, who have only just lost their work-from-home expenses left over from the pandemic. The same letter promises that, where “a staff member is required to travel to their normal place of work but is unable to return home, or it would be unreasonable to return home and then attempt to travel in the following day, we will consider requests for hotel costs”. We’re all in this together…

After more than two years, IPSA have finally ended the tax-free £26-per month Covid homeworking allowance for parliamentary staff. In new guidance released this week, the body announced the final payment would be issued in July:

Now that Covid-related restrictions have been lifted, and there is no general work-from-home requirement in place, we have determined it is the right time to end payment of the allowance for the majority of staff members.

The final payment for staff on office-based contracts (including hybrid contracts) will be in July 2022. Staff members who are on home-based contracts will remain eligible for the allowance beyond July.

If every staffer claimed the allowance, which was introduced to cover their home telephone usage, internet, electricity and gas, it would have cost the taxpayer £1.1 million a year. For some reason it took a three-month review for IPSA to conclude that this might now be unnecessary. Back to the office…

Hacks waiting to pore over the latest MP expenses data will have to wait longer than expected. Having previously marked this upcoming Thursday as the next publication date – and with the last set of data arriving last September, 9 months ago – the increasingly less independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has just confirmed they have delayed the latest release. They claim they’re still “hopeful” to get the data out there before the end of the month…

Guido just spoke to the IPSA press office on the phone. They claim it’s “largely out of their hands” as they’re still waiting for the publication of “the full security review” following the death of Sir David Amess. As Guido reported back in October, IPSA informed MPs they were delaying the release of the November data, and redacting swathes of information from the new data set – mainly relating to travel and constituency surgery venue hire – in the wake of security concerns following Sir David’s murder. Even at the time, Guido thought this reeked of an excuse to return to the old pre-scandal expenses system. Now, 9 months later, it looks like that’s bearing out…