MSPs will not be able to claim additional expenses for working from home while the Scottish Parliament is closed due to the coronavirus crisis.
Holyrood’s corporate body will consider exceptional applications if the MSP has insufficient funds to run his or her work from home or from staff’s home during the lockdown.
The Parliament’s allowances office could consider small additional items that may have to be purchased, for instance an additional printer per office, but there will be no across-theboard expenses increases for the 129 MSPs.
It is also understood Holyrood has for some time had policies in place to support home working well before the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Scottish Parliament spokesman said: “We have not increased MSPs office cost provision.”
On Thursday it emerged MPs will be able to claim up to £10,000 extra in expenses for working from home costs while Westminster is shut.
READ MORE: MPs able to claim up to £10,000 for home-working expenses
MPs and their staff can get a portion of their heating bills repaid and money can be spent on equipment like office furniture and printers.
The new allowance is on top of the £26,000 available for office costs.
The body responsible for MPs’ allowances and expenses, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), has told MPs what they can claim for.
IPSA states: “Both MPs and staff members can claim for part of their bills, where the costs are in addition to the normal costs of living in the home.”
It explains a formula dependent on the size of the home and how many hours a day are spent working. It continued: “A pro-rata amount can be calculated by working out the proportion of the house/flat being used as a home office (for example one room out of six rooms in a house = 1/6) and the number of hours per day when the room is used as an office (for example eight hours out of 24 = 1/3).
In this example, 1/18 of the total household bill would be claimable.”
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