MP expenses

Read this before drawing conclusions. This does NOT include most MPs’ staffing costs. Permanent staff salaries (typically around three-quarters of an MP’s total business costs) are published by IPSA separately, once a year after the financial year closes, as one aggregate payroll figure per MP — not as individual claims, so they are not in the figures on this page at all. What you see here — office costs, accommodation, travel, and bought-in/temporary staffing — is real money and a real part of the picture, just not the majority of it. That means these totals are not comparable to the “average MP costs around £170,000–£220,000 a year” figures reported elsewhere, which include payroll. These are legitimate business costs of doing the job (office rent, travel between constituency and Westminster), not personal income or a scandal by default — a higher total often just reflects a rural or distant constituency with higher travel and accommodation costs, or a Cabinet/shadow role with extra running costs. Figures shown are amount paid, not amount claimed — a claim can be reduced or rejected (IPSA publishes why, where that happened). Some categories — every MP Travel, Staff Travel, and Dependant Travel claim, plus some MPs’ rent and hotel claims — are published by IPSA as one whole-year total rather than itemised by date, marked “Aggregated” below; this is IPSA’s own security practice for anything that would reveal an MP’s individual travel dates or home address, not something Hear, Hear has chosen to hide. Data is loaded from IPSA’s own published files roughly every two months, so “up to date” means up to whichever publication is listed above, not today.