Unveiling Political Finances: Explore MPs’ Earnings and Donations with the New Westminster Accounts Tool

Westminster Accounts: A Guide to Navigating the Database

Curious about your MP's declared earnings and contributions? Want to know who their benefactors are? Interested in the parliamentary groups they belong to and their financiers? Delve into the Westminster Accounts using our interactive platform.

Thursday, September 19, 2024, 7:

The Westminster Accounts interactive database provides a tool for exploring data on reported earnings and contributions for any MP, political party, parliamentary group, or donor since the previous election.

Sky News and Tortoise Media have systematically gathered and scrutinized numerous public documents to compile a comprehensive database of financial interests within Westminster starting from December 2019.

Locate your Member of Parliament with the Westminster Accounts resource.

This signifies that, for the first time, it's now straightforward to view the aggregate totals of contributions and income for each MP, a task that was once challenging to compile and analyze because of the format in which the records were released.

How can you navigate the database on your own?

Locate a Member

Upon launching the Westminster Accounts interactive database, a search box appears on the screen.

You have the option to look up any Member of Parliament or discover who represents you by inputting your postcode. You can also choose to explore a randomly selected MP featured above the input field.

Financial Performance and Contributions Detailed

After choosing, you will receive a detailed overview of the project followed by the disclosure of information regarding your selected Member of Parliament.

The device provides a count of the financial disclosures made by the MP since the previous general election.

Every statement is depicted as a circle colored according to the MP's party affiliation. By clicking on the circle, you can view the declaration's amount, its source, and the date it was recorded.

Membership in the All

Following the details on the Member of Parliament's disclosed financial interests, you'll find a segment that indicates if they have held a position as an officer in any all-party parliamentary groups.

These are casual collectives of MPs from different political parties who unite to concentrate on a specific topic of interest.

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Numerous All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) exist, yet they do not benefit from direct financial backing from Parliament. Consequently, they frequently depend on external entities or contributors to support their activities.

This section outlines the contributors who have supported the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) that your selected Member of Parliament belongs to, detailing both monetary donations and contributions in kind.

Contributions to

The following section of the image uncovers the contributions made to your Member of Parliament's political party.

The instrument will display the number of financial backers the party has reported and the overall sum.

Ultimately, we will examine how the contributions to the specified party stack up against those received by other political groups, and how the interests of your Member of Parliament measure up to their peers in the House of Commons.

Delve deeper

Following your exploration into your MP's declared interests and their position in the broader landscape of financial interactions within parliament, you might be inclined to delve deeper.

The last section of the digital interface allows for exactly this purpose.

Located in the upper right-hand section, there is a search bar, with four buttons positioned above it – labeled as party, MP, APPG, and Source of £.

When you click on the search field, a list will appear, sorted by the highest values, allowing you to delve deeper into each item by clicking on them.

Additionally, you can perform a direct search within any specific category to find more details.

We look forward to your frequent visits to the Westminster Accounts. Should you choose to revisit and prefer to bypass the initial narrative or details about the chosen MP, there’s an option available. Simply click the "skip intro slides" and "skip to explore" button located at the bottom left corner to go directly to the searchable database page.

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Additional Details

The database consolidates the following sources:

• The log detailing MPs' additional income, contributions, presents, and other advantages is known as the register of members' financial interests.

• The document that notes the contributions, gifts, and other benefits associated with all-party parliamentary groups is called the register of all-party parliamentary groups.

• The register maintained by the Electoral Commission, which lists the donations, gifts, and other benefits that political parties in the House of Commons receive.

Significantly, the database excludes the costs MPs report for operating their offices, as well as their standard yearly salary of £84,144.

Extra earnings from ministerial roles are not included in the database. It concentrates on the additional income MPs make beyond their parliamentary salaries and the donations they receive.

The database does not record instances where funds are distributed, such as when an MP donates their received money to charity.

Further insights into the rationale and processes behind these decisions are available in our openly available methodology document.

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