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Ministerial expenses

What information does this cover?

Ministerial expenses incurred in the course of official government business, including the cost of travel, government cars, entertainment (for instance, hosting dinners) and mobile phone bills, and so on.

Note: such requests may be received as part of a wider request related to, for example, diary and personal information. This working assumption applies only to information related to expenses (i.e. the costs, not the details).

Working assumption

Information that is already available in the annual lists published by government on travel, gifts and official cars should be withheld under section 21 (reasonably accessible to the applicant by other means) and you should refer the requester to the annual lists. If it will be published at a future date, it may be withheld under section 22 (future publication).

For most other information held about ministerial expenses incurred as part of official government business, you should release the information. (Note that such cases should be referred to the Clearing House: see paragraph 5.)

Reason for the working assumption

There is a general public interest in disclosure of such information as it increases the transparency of government use of public funds.

To increase transparency in this area, the government already publishes a large amount of information about ministerial spending. Assembling this information is resource intensive but the government takes the view that it is reasonable on the grounds that freedom of information requests received in-year will be answered by reference to the annual lists.

Referral Points

If you propose to release information about ministerial expenses, even if it is in line with this working assumption, you should refer the case to the Cabinet Office.

Notes

1. The annual lists of ministerial expenses can be found on the Cabinet Office website. Details of allowance expenditure by Members of Parliament can be found on the UK Parliament website.