MPs' expenses receipts to stay secret, IPSA rules

The decision means that the kind of documents which triggered the 2009 expenses scandal will in future be kept secret.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), created to clean up Parliament in the wake of the scandal, said that publishing receipts would be expensive and was not required by law.

The ruling was revealed in a letter turning down a request by The Sunday Telegraph to see three receipts under the Freedom of Information Act.

Explaining the decision, Kiran Virdee of IPSA stated: "IPSA will not, as a matter of course, publish images of receipts or invoices supporting claims."

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which oversees the public's right to obtain official documents, will now investigate.

A spokesman for the ICO said: "We are happy with IPSA's approach that it doesn't pro-actively publish [MPs' expenses receipts], but if a request comes in, every receipt should be considered on a case-by-case basis so there's no blanket exemption."

Campaigners for open government criticised IPSA's approach.

John Mann, the Labour MP, said publication was essential in order to reassure the public that the expenses system was now open and rigorous.

He said: "I can't see why, if there's a request for these receipts, they should not be made available. Otherwise we can't move on from this scandal."

Martin Bell, the former independent MP, said: "MPs should not make expenses claims that they cannot justify in public. IPSA are in danger of become as much a creature of the House of Commons as the old Fees Office was."

Under the system of parliamentary allowances, MPs must submit receipts for every item of expenditure in order to claim back the money from taxpayers.

In 2008, in a case brought by The Sunday Telegraph and other journalists, the High Court ordered that the receipts should be disclosed.

The ruling led to the expenses scandal, with the revelation that MPs had claimed for items including a duck house and moat-cleaning. Four MPs were jailed over fraudulent claims.

Parliamentary authorities published more than a million receipts in 2009, with sensitive details such as addresses and account numbers "redacted" or blacked out.

When responsibility for the expenses system was transferred to IPSA in 2010, Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, recommended that the new body "should continue to publish, at least quarterly, each individual claim for reimbursement made by MPs with accompanying receipts".

However, IPSA decided not to publish receipts routinely - saving £750,000, according to Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, its chairman.

But it struck a deal with Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, whereby when receipts were requested under the Freedom of Information Act they would be released unless there was a legal reason not to.

To test this, The Sunday Telegraph asked IPSA, in Dec 2010, for copies of the receipts relating to three claims made earlier that year: £652.13 claimed by John Bercow, the Speaker, for "website design/production"; £145.70 claimed by George Osborne, the Chancellor, for "headed paper"; and £63.61 claimed by Alan Keen, the Labour MP, who has since died, for "stationery/banner".

IPSA sent a response 11 months later, giving more details of the spending but withholding the receipts, and blaming the delay on a clerical error. Following an internal review by IPSA, John Sills, the organisation's director of policy, upheld the decision last week.

No further explanation was given. An IPSA spokesman said last night: "We released all the information from the receipts. We don't have a blanket approach to handling FOI requests, we deal with each one as it comes in."

Mr Bercow, who chairs a parliamentary committee which oversees IPSA, last night declined to disclose his website design receipt.

The Speaker's spokeman said: "The question of whether receipts are published is a matter for the IPSA and the FOI process. It would be inappropriate for the Speaker to become involved."

The legal case which prompted the MPs' expenses scandal began in 2005, when the Freedom of Information Act came into force and journalists used it to ask parliament to release details of claims.

Parliamentary officials declined to release full details of claims. The ICO ruled in 2007 that the receipts should not be published. The case next went to an Information Tribunal, which ruled that the full receipts should be disclosed.

In 2008 a High Court panel of judges chaired by Lord Judge, now the Lord Chief Justice, agreed the receipts should be published.

The judges ruled: "The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers."