Analysis

Expense outliers

Cross-MP IPSA expense analysis. We rank MPs whose claims sit furthest above their peers within each spending category for 2024-25, using a z-score against the per-category distribution.

Latest year

2024-25

Most recent IPSA financial year

MPs with claims

993

Distinct MPs in latest year

Total claimed

£247.5m

All categories, latest year

Biggest outliers (2024-25)

The 15 category-year claims furthest above their category mean, measured in standard deviations (z-score). A high z-score flags an MP whose spend in that category is unusual relative to peers. See the methodology note below before drawing conclusions.

#	MP	Party	Category	Amount	Z-score	Bar
1	Brendan O'Hara	Scottish National Party	Travel	£56k	+6.36σ
2	Mr Alistair Carmichael	Liberal Democrat	Travel	£52k	+5.83σ

By category (2024-25)

Total claimed and average per MP for each category, ranked by total.

Category	Total	MPs	Avg / MP	Std dev
Staffing	£193.3m	993	£195k	£43k
Office	£27.9m	993	£28k	£6k
Accommodation	£19.2m	831	£23k	£8k
Travel	£7.1m	935

Category trend over years

Total claimed per category across every financial year covered.

Office

Accommodation

Other

Staffing

Travel

Methodology

Z-score is how many standard deviations an MP's claim sits above the mean claim within that category for the latest year. We compute the mean and population standard deviation across all MPs with a claim in the category, then score each claim (amount − mean) / stddev.
High ≠ wrongdoing. A large z-score simply means the spend is unusual versus peers. Constituency size, the number of staff employed, distance from Westminster and London accommodation costs all drive large, entirely legitimate variation. These are verified, paid claims, not allegations.
Each category is scored against its own distribution, so a high staffing claim is only compared with other staffing claims.

Data: Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). Published under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009.

MP expenses dashboard →← Analysis hub

Biggest outliers (2024-25)

By category (2024-25)

Category trend over years

Methodology

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