There’s a lot in the news right now about the Register of MPs’ financial interests, where MPs are supposed to declare all extra income and donations they receive.
For years TheyWorkForYou has republished the register and made it easier to see changes over time. But there’s a lot more that can be done to improve this information and get a better understanding of the influence of money in politics.
Our WhoFundsThem project is going to do the digging into this information — creating summaries and publishing what we find in a clear and accessible way on MPs’ individual profiles on TheyWorkForYou.
The three key questions for us are:
- Is everything being declared?
- Is what’s being declared clearly understandable?
- And, is what’s being declared acceptable to the public?
To answer this we’ve made a set of 32 questions we want to answer for each MP: we’ll be pulling on the Register, Companies House, MPs’ websites and parliamentary debates.
Our team of volunteers will be working together to answer these over the next few months — giving us new information to share with the public on TheyWorkForYou.
If you think this work is important and politics should be more transparent, then we would love your help — can you donate today?
DONATE FOR A TRANSPARENT DEMOCRACY
Thank you for your support!
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Image: Thomas Kelley