Unveiling the Westminster Accounts: A Comprehensive Guide to MPs’ Earnings and Donations

Westminster Accounts: Navigate the Database on Your Own

What are the declared earnings and contributions of your MP? Who contributes to them? What groups within parliament do they belong to, and who supports these groups financially? Dive into the Westminster Accounts using our interactive feature.

Thursday, September 19, 2024, 7:

The Westminster Accounts interactive database provides a tool to look up data on income and contributions reported by any MP, political party, parliamentary group, or contributor since the previous election.

Sky News and Tortoise Media have systematically gathered and examined a vast number of public documents to compile a comprehensive database of financial interests in Westminster since December 2019.

Locate your Member of Parliament with the Westminster Accounts resource.

This indicates that, for the first time, it has become straightforward to view the aggregate amounts of donations and earnings for each Member of Parliament – 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 independently?

Locate a Member

Upon launching the Westminster Accounts interactive database, you are greeted with a search box.

You have the option to look up any Member of Parliament (MP) or discover who represents you by typing in your postcode. You can also choose to explore the random MP featured above the input field.

Financial Contributions and Gifts Detailed

After you've made your choice, you will receive a detailed description of the project followed by the disclosure of information regarding your selected Member of Parliament.

The instrument will inform you of the number of financial declarations made by the MP since the previous general election.

Every statement is depicted as a circle, colored according to the political party of the MP. 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 of the MP's financial disclosures, the next section will indicate if they have held a position as an officer within any all-party parliamentary group.

These are casual collectives of MPs from various political parties who unite to concentrate on specific topics of interest.

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Numerous All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) exist, yet they are not directly funded by parliament. Consequently, they frequently depend on external organizations or contributors to finance their activities.

In this segment, you'll find out which contributors have supplied financial support or gifts in kind to the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) that the MP you're interested in belongs to.

Contributions to

The subsequent segment of the image disclosed pertains to the contributions made to your Member of Parliament's political party.

The instrument will display the number of financial backers the party has reported, as well as the overall sum.

Ultimately, we will examine how contributions to the specified political party stack up against those received by other parties, and we'll also look at how your Member of Parliament's interests align with those of other MPs in the House of Commons.

Delve deeper

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

The last section of the interactive feature allows you to accomplish precisely this.

In the upper right-hand section, there is a search field, and positioned above it are four buttons labeled: party, MP, APPG, and Source of £.

When you click on the search box, a list appears ranked by the highest values, allowing you to click on each item to delve deeper into the details.

You can search within any specific category to find more details.

We trust you'll be eager to revisit the Westminster Accounts frequently. Should you choose to return and prefer to bypass the initial narrative or overview of the chosen MP, there’s an option in the bottom left corner that allows you to "skip intro slides" and "skip to explore," taking you directly back to the page where you can search through the database.

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Additional details

The database compiles information from these sources:

• The log detailing MPs' additional earnings, contributions, gifts, and further advantages, known as the register of members' financial interests.

• The directory of all-party parliamentary groups, which notes the contributions, gifts, and other benefits associated with all APPGs.

• The Electoral Commission's ledger, documenting the donations, gifts, and other benefits that political parties in the House of Commons receive.

Significantly, the database excludes the costs MPs claim for operating their offices and their yearly starting salary of £84,144.

Extra earnings for roles such as ministerial positions are not included in the database. It concentrates on the supplementary income MPs gain beyond their parliamentary salaries and any contributions they receive.

The database also does not record outgoing payments, so any donations to charity made by your MP will not be shown.

Further insights into the rationale and processes behind these decisions can be found in our openly available methodology.

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