FoI 26-25: Information in regards to Mr Andy Allen MLA’s expenditure during the financial year 2023-2024
Information Standards Freedom of Information Response
Our Ref: FoI 26-25
25 March 2025
Freedom of Information Act 2000
I am writing to confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (Assembly Commission) has processed your request dated 3 March 2025 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). Your request was as follows-
'I am writing to formally request a detailed breakdown of the £37,163.28 listed under "Members' Expenditure - Other Expenses" for Mr. Andy Allen during the financial year 2023-2024.
As a matter of public interest and transparency, I would appreciate a clear itemization of this expenditure, including specific costs, dates, and purposes of the incurred expenses. Please provide this information at your earliest convenience.'
Our response
When publishing the costs recovered by Members, "Members' Expenditure - Other Expenses", the Assembly Commission includes a number of different categories added together. These may relate to any or all of recall expenses, disability expenses, or winding up expenses.
More information on what these categories relate to and what is admissible expenditure may be found in the Assembly Members (Salaries and Expenses) Determination (Northern Ireland) 2016, as amended by the Assembly Members (Salaries and Expenses) (Amendment) Determination (Northern Ireland) 2020, which can be found here.
This published information in this case relates only to recovery of disability expenses. A 'disability expense' is 'an expense incurred by the member which is wholly and necessarily attributable to a disability the member has'.
Information on the specific costs, dates, and purposes of these expenses is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA, since it constitutes personal data of Mr. Allen and the condition set out at section 40(3A) is satisfied (disclosure of the information to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles).
The data protection principles are set out at Article 5 of the UK GDPR.[1] This requires processing of personal data to be fair, lawful and transparent. Processing is 'lawful' under Article 5 only if it satisfies one or more of the conditions at Article 6 of the UK GDPR.
In this case, the Assembly Commission has considered whether the processing would be necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest under Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR. 'Necessary' means that the processing must be more than useful or desirable and processing is not 'necessary' if the task can reasonably be accomplished by some other less intrusive means.
In this case the public expenditure has been published on the Assembly Commission website. It is subject to approval by the Assembly Commission Finance Office, and oversight by the Assembly Commission's internal auditors. The public interest in the use of Members expenses is adequately met by these steps without a detailed breakdown of the disability expenses claimed by Mr. Allen.
The Assembly Commission also considers that processing data on disability expenses recovered by Mr. Allen would result in disclosure of special category data relating to his health. This would require one of the additional conditions for processing set out at Article 9 of the UK GDPR to be satisfied. The Assembly Commission does not consider that any such condition is satisfied in this case.
Further Information
You have the right to request an internal review of this decision by the Assembly Commission. If you wish to request such a review, please write to me at the above address. If, after that review, you are dissatisfied with the way in which the Assembly Commission has handled your request for information, you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Your request for information and our response may be published in the disclosure log maintained by the Assembly Commission under a publication scheme agreed with the ICO. The request and our response will be anonymised.
Yours faithfully
INFORMATION STANDARDS
[1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council
