FOI:70-25 Information in regards to the Members record of attendance at Parliament Buildings

Information Standards Freedom of Information Response

14 January 2025

Our Ref: FOI 70-25

Freedom of Information Act 2000

The Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (Assembly Commission) has processed your request dated 17 November 2025 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).  In your request you asked for the following:

“[C]opies of all MLAs’ forms MF12 for the years ended 31 March 2022, 31 March 2023, 31 March 2024 and 31 March 2025.”

Our response

The Assembly Commission holds information in relation to your request and you can access this in the separate link that will be forwarded to you.

The MF12 form is an annual Declaration of Compliance that Members must submit to confirm:

• In the previous year the Member has complied with the requirements of the applicable Determination (in the period covered by this request, either the Assembly Members (Office and Staffing Costs and Allowances) Determination (Northern Ireland) 2025 or the Assembly Members (Salaries and Expenses) Determination (Northern Ireland) 2016), and that the Member continues to meet specific conditions; and
• The Member has maintained a record of attendance at Parliament Buildings, and attended Parliament Buildings for a minimum number of qualifying days (where a Member has not attended for the minimum number of qualifying days, that Member must specify the number of qualifying days attended).

The minimum number of qualifying days specified in the 2025 and 2016 Determinations is 72.  In a year where there is an election and Members are not attending the Assembly, this number is pro-rata accordingly. Similarly, historically, during periods when normal Assembly business is not being undertaken and recess periods are not applicable, the minimum number of day’s attendance may also be adjusted.

The minimum number of days of attendance required for the previous four years were set as:

The number of days included on the MF12 may not be reflective of the final number of qualifying days recorded as the Member’s attendance at Parliament Buildings. There are several reasons for this:

• The MF12 only requires a Member to record the total number of days they attended Parliament Buildings where a Member attended less than the minimum number of qualifying days.
• Any day that a Member uses an official car for travelling to Parliament Buildings does not qualify for Assembly Travel Allowance (ATA) and these days may also be excluded from the number of qualifying days submitted to Finance Office. 
• The attendance record may show that the total included on the MF12 includes non-qualifying days. A ‘qualifying day’ is any day where a Member attends Parliament Buildings to carry out functions as a Member. Attendance at Parliament Buildings for activities that do not constitute functions as a Member, such as attending a party meeting, is outside of the scope of ATA and therefore may not be included in the number of qualifying days submitted to the Finance Office. Therefore, the final number of qualifying days may be less than the amount recorded on the MF12.

Furthermore, the travel information collected on MF12 forms is only used to validate the ATA paid to a Member during the financial year. As such if a Member is a Minister, the boxes relating to their number of qualifying days attending Parliament Buildings are irrelevant, as they have not received this allowance and their number of qualifying days does not need to be validated.

Certain information redacted from the attached documents is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA, which provides that information is exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and satisfies one of three conditions. ‘Personal data’ is defined by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR’).

The Assembly Commission is satisfied that the condition set out at section 40(3A)(a) of FOIA is satisfied in respect of the information withheld. The condition is that ‘disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act…would contravene any of the data protection principles…’

The data protection principles are set out at Article 5 of the UK GDPR. The first principle is that processing of personal data must be fair, lawful and transparent.  Processing is ‘lawful’ under the first principle if it satisfies one or more of the conditions at Article 6 of the UK GDPR. 

The Assembly Commission does not consider that any condition at Article 6 would allow the lawful disclosure of personal signatures and phone numbers and these have been removed from the MF12 forms. 

Further Information

You may 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 sincerely

INFORMATION STANDARDS