Question

To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, on which dates in January 2021 the directors of IPSA (a) met and (b) plan to meet to discuss volunteer subsistence costs; and if IPSA will publish minutes relating to (i) those meetings and (ii) other senior IPSA management meetings in the past six months on volunteer subsistence costs.

There have not been any specific director meetings on volunteer expenses but the policy team and the Chief Executive of IPSA considered carefully the issue of food costs for volunteers who are working from home. A guiding principle in the stewardship of the use of public funds is that reimbursement is appropriate where there is a work-related expense that is additional to usual living costs. In this case, volunteers working on the parliamentary estate or in a constituency office would be incurring additional expense by needing to purchase food. This is not the case when the volunteer is at home as they would not incur additional food costs whilst working for an MP.