New launch, new launch! We could have just talked about our new votes platform, but it was much more interesting to also explore a bit of history, and research into how MPs and the public use TheyWorkForYou. So, together with Dr Ben Worthy, Alex and Julia, that’s what we did.

• Find the TheyWorkForYou Votes platform here.
• Here’s a blog post about its launch.
• And here’s the same launch event that you hear in this episode of the podcast, only in video form.
• If you’d like to help us do more of this kind of work, please donate to mySociety.
• Sign up for the Repowering Democracy newsletter.
• How to help us gather information on how MPs are voting on the End of Life Bill.
• Ben’s research can be found on his website Who’s Watching Westminster.

Speaker 1 0:00 Hello again. I’m Myf, Communications Manager at mySociety. We recently launched a new vote information platform, votes.theyworkforyou.com, and this is the first step towards making it much easier to understand the context around how your own MP voted – and also, if you’re a specialist, you’ll find lots of new tools and data that you can use.

Myf Nixon 0:23 We had an online launch event for this, and you can listen to that right now. As well as Alex getting into the more technical details, we’ll first of all hear Julia talking about some of the milestones in TheyWorkForYou’s history, and Dr Ben Worthy sharing some of his fascinating research on how MPs and the general public have, through history, used voting records.

Myf Nixon 0:47 I’ll put the links in our show notes to everything that gets mentioned in the recording. And also, if you’d rather watch this than listen to it, you can do just that on the mySociety site. So again, I’ll make sure that that link is in the show notes.

(more…)

On March 4, we launched new data on TheyWorkForYou, making MPs’ financial interests easier for everyone to access and understand.

This wasn’t an easy undertaking! To explain the difficulties we encountered, and the recommendations we have for the way MPs declare their interests, we also put out a report.

At our launch event, we chatted through the challenges and our recommendations, together with Rose Whiffen of Transparency International, and Chris Cook from the Financial Times.

• 📄Our report, Beyond Transparency.
• 🙏Donate to mySociety, so we can do more of this kind of work.
• 📺Rather watch this as a video instead of a podcast?

Myf Nixon 0:01 Hi, Myf here, Communications Manager from mySociety. At the beginning of March, we launched the findings from our WhoFundsThem project. And you know what? This was a major undertaking for mySociety. (more…)

It’s March 4 2025, and we’re releasing a bunch of new data on TheyWorkForYou, around each MPs’ financial interests: that’s whether they have second jobs, what donations helped them campaign ahead of the general election, and whether they’ve received gifts such as Taylor Swift tickets.

In the course of assembling this data — with the help of our brilliant team of volunteers — we’ve come to understand exactly what the problems with the current system of reporting are.

If you’re seeing this on the morning of release, we’ll also be launching a report at 1pm today, and you’re welcome to join us. (Don’t worry if you’re too late; we’ll be sharing the video afterwards. Just make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter to be alerted when it’s available).

Don’t forget to check out your own MP, to see who funds them, on TheyWorkForYou.com. And if you have any questions about this project, the data, or MPs’ financial interests in general, send them to us at whofundsthem@mysociety.org.

If you appreciate this type of work, please help us do more of it by making a one-off (or even better, a regular) donation. Thank you!

[0:00] Julia: If you’ve ever wondered if your MP has a second job, what donations they received, or if they were one of the ones that got a free Taylor Swift ticket, we’ve got the answers for you. (more…)