Compensation claims (2022)
Request
1) How many compensation claims have been against the House of Commons by people working on the Parliamentary estate – including House of Commons staff, MPs, Lords and their respective employees – as well as visitors, over the last two years (up to and including the end of November 2022)? To be clear, I am asking for information for the calendar years of 2021 and 2022 up until the end of November).
2) For each case where a compensation claim has been made, please could you provide:
a. the amount (in pounds sterling) of the initial claim,
b. the reason for the claim (i.e describe what happened to prompt it),
c. who made the claim (i.e. House of Commons staff, an MP, peer, their staff or a visitor) and,
d. if applicable, the amount paid out.
Please note, in a previous FoI response to a request (F20-463) asking for the same information for a different time period, claimants were identified as either a “Visitor” or “Internal”. In the interests of transparency, in the latter category, please can it be specified whether the complainant was an MP or a peer. There are more than 700 peers and more than 600 MPs therefore stating whether the claimant was an MP or peer would not identify them.
3) Please could you provide a date for each compensation claim submitted and, if related to an incident on the Parliamentary estate, the approximate location for where the accident happened.
Response
1) How many compensation claims have been against the House of Commons by people working on the Parliamentary estate – including House of Commons staff, MPs, Lords and their respective employees – as well as visitors, over the last two years (up to and including the end of November 2022)? To be clear, I am asking for information for the calendar years of 2021 and 2022 up until the end of November).
This information is held by the House of Commons.
From 1 January 2021 to 30 November 2022 inclusive, eight personal injury claims were made against the House of Commons. To clarify, these were pre-action Letters of Claim and not claims issued in the courts.
In addition and for the same time period, 16 compensation claims for loss or damage to property have been paid to visitors and individuals working on the parliamentary estate.
2) For each case where a compensation claim has been made, please could you provide:
a. the amount (in pounds sterling) of the initial claim,
b. the reason for the claim (i.e describe what happened to prompt it),
c. who made the claim (i.e. House of Commons staff, an MP, peer, their staff or a visitor) and,
d. if applicable, the amount paid out.
Please note, in a previous FoI response to a request (F20-463) asking for the same information for a different time period, claimants were identified as either a “Visitor” or “Internal”. In the interests of transparency, in the latter category, please can it be specified whether the complainant was an MP or a peer. There are more than 700 peers and more than 600 MPs therefore stating whether the claimant was an MP or peer would not identify them.
and
3) Please could you provide a date for each compensation claim submitted and, if related to an incident on the Parliamentary estate, the approximate location for where the accident happened.
This information is held by the House of Commons.
With regard to the eight personal injury claims, the provision of the details you require for each individual claim would make the claimant identifiable, so this information is their personal data. Information relating to the individual claims is therefore exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 40 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), as disclosure of this information to the public would not be consistent with the data protection principle found in Article 5.1(a) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
However, to be helpful, we can provide the following information about all eight personal injury claims;
• Four of the claims were from House of Commons staff, two claims were from agency staff, one claim from Metropolitan Police staff and the remaining claim from a member of the public.
• The date of the submitted claims are August and November of 2021 and March, May, June and October of 2022.
• The locations of the accidents were 1 Parliament Street, Richmond House, Palace of Westminster, and Portcullis House.
• Claims relate to gates on the estate, to electrical supply and/or electrical equipment, to tripping whilst on the estate, and lastly to items being dropped whilst working.
• An amount of the claim was not stated in any initial Letter of Claim.
We are committed to protecting the health and safety of those that work on or visit the parliamentary estate. We have in place robust arrangements, including a network of fully trained first aiders, to help prevent accidents and we work to reduce harm wherever possible. The number of accidents reported are in line with comparable organisations, and the type and number of accidents are not due to any inherent work practices within the buildings.
In addition, we hold a breakdown of information relating to the 16 loss or damage compensation claims made by individuals. In the same way, the disclosure of the full details we hold would make it possible for individuals to be identified, so this information is also their personal data. This includes specifying whether a claimant is an MP or a Peer, as you have requested above. The full details are therefore also exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 40(2) FOIA.
However, to be helpful we have tried to supply as much information as we can about these claims.
Please note that the following actions have been taken to prevent the disclosure of identifiable information:
• We have only provided the month and year of the claim dates
• We have identified the claimants as Visitors and ‘Internal’ (which summarises any individual who may be staff, MPs and/or their staff, Lords and/or their staff, or contractors)
• Where held, we have provided you with the general locations in which the incidents happened to these individuals.