Compensation claims - property (2022)
Request
- Could you please tell me how much the House of Commons has paid out in compensation claims for damage to personal items since 1 January 2021? This includes cars damaged in the car park and items broken and items stolen.
- Could you please tell me how much compensation was paid out for each item or incident, the month and year of when this happened and the member to whom each item belonged?
Response
In the first instance please note that the House of Commons and the House of Lords are two separate public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). However, in some of the cases of compensation below, part of the compensation is paid out by the House of Commons and another part by the House of Lords. Our response only covers the former and if you are seeking information about the latter, you may wish to forward your request to the House of Lords. Requests for information relating to the House of Lords should be directed to foilords@parliament.uk.
1. Could you please tell me how much the House of Commons has paid out in compensation claims for damage to personal items since 1 January 2021? This includes cars damaged in the car park and items broken and items stolen.
Some information is held by the House of Commons in relation to your request. We hold information about compensation paid out in response to claims for loss or damage to property. Since 1 January 2021, we have paid out £16,652 for this.
2. Could you please tell me how much compensation was paid out for each item or incident, the month and year of when this happened and the member to whom each item belonged?
This information is held by the House of Commons.
*Please note that in some of the cases we do not hold the month of the incident. However, we do hold the information that they took place in 2021 and therefore fall within the scope of your request.
We also hold the names of Members where they were the claimant. However, disclosure of this information to the public generally, in our view, would not be consistent with the data protection principles in Article 5 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). This information is therefore exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 40(2) of the FOIA. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.