A New Tool is Tracking Money in British Politics

The recent political turmoil at 10 Downing Street has shined a light on the need for transparency in British politics. As Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, continues to flounder in his efforts to bring even his own party on board with a style of governance that works for everyone post-Brexit, private citizens are wondering if their government truly works for them or has the best interests of some sort of donor at heart.

In response to this, Sky News and Tortoise Media went about creating Westminster Accounts (WA), a database that breaks down how and from whom individual politicians, political parties, and even Parliament as a whole receive their funding. Users can search by MP names or postcodes to learn about secondary earnings, financial interests, donations to political organizations, received donations, and gifts. The database currently covers all MPs from the 2019 general election but will be updated after the next general election, to be held no later than January 2025. 

“For the first time, this allows us to do something MPs may find uncomfortable,” wrote Sky News. “[We can] create leader boards and league tables, showing where the largest sums flow from and to. Who has received the most money in earnings in this Parliament? Which donors give to individual MPs as well as parties? Which companies and people have donated the most and which MPs are the beneficiaries. And what benefits are provided to all party parliamentary groups - informal networks of MPs often supported financially by companies and countries seeking to forward an agenda.”

The aim of this project is to restore trust and transparency in British politics. In a letter to the public, Sky Newsand Tortoise Mediaaddressed what they hoped this new tool would accomplish:

"The way that information is disclosed prevents it from being widely scrutinised by the public. Records are spread across different databases, written in complicated formats, and regularly published with errors. Trawling through financial interests is a laborious task and it is too easy to misinterpret the results.

"We believe that our role is to provide our readers, listeners and viewers with impartial insight and information, and that voters should be able to find, in one place, the details of any financial contributions to their political representatives. To find out, who is ultimately funding our politics?"

WA is the result of a joint effort between Sky News and Tortoise Media journalists, who painstakingly hunted down datasets and financial transactions to populate the database. The project took well over six months to create. WA visualizes data for you in a circle chart that discloses exactly how much money (in pounds/£) the MP you’re researching has received in donations and gifts. Accompanying this information are slides that present an analysis of the data you are looking at: You can find out who donated the most money, the biggest financial interest your MP has declared, the total amount of money that has poured into their campaign, and how this individual’s financial picture fits within the larger context of their own party, and also within Parliament as a whole.

Some of this data has shocked the British public and the subject of how much an MP should be allowed to earn from their work outside Parliament is an ongoing discussion. WA shows that current MPs have made over £17.1 million since the last election. The former prime minister, Theresa May, made close to £2.8 million of that in gifts, donations, and payments. The smallest single item May declared was a £300 gift from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. As for the current prime minister, the aforementioned Rishi Sunak? He has about £546,000 in declared gifts and donations by comparison.

During an afternoon session on January 9, Sunak addressed the effect WA will have on Parliament. He told MPs to be prepared to “justify” their donations to their constituents.

“I think transparency is really important for the healthy functioning of democracy, it’s absolutely right that there’s disclosures around donations and outside interests,” he said. “Transparency is a good thing. I fully support it.”