(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Who’s funding your MP? Here’s how to find out [1] [] Date: 2024-06 Who does your MP work for? The constituency, right? Who does the government prioritise when deciding on policy or handing out contracts? The public, of course. In our democracy, we elect politicians to represent the people’s interests and improve their quality of life. But is any of that true in reality? This is the central question we need to address, and that’s why I’ve set up Consolidate – an online database that tells you exactly who funds your MP, what shares they own, and any second jobs they might have. The current Conservative government has presided over the first parliament in modern history in which living standards have dropped, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank. NHS waiting lists are sky-high, housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable, poverty rates are rising, and on top of this, the tax burden is at its highest level in 50 years, while wages have effectively flatlined in real terms. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now And yet, there has been a significant rise in the wealth of the top few per cent, with the top 1% of Brits owning as much as the bottom 70%. Why, in our democratic society, do we have a system that is working only for a tiny minority? This is where the question of who politicians work for comes in. We know that during the pandemic, a ‘VIP’ lane helped companies with links to senior politicians and aides to win contracts worth a reported £1.7bn. We know that the tech firm founded by the Conservatives’ single biggest donor, Frank Hester, won £135m in NHS contracts between 2019 and 2022. And we know that companies with ties to Tory donor and life peer John Nash have received more than £3.8bn from government spending in the past eight years. While there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Hester, Nash or any of their companies, all of this means it can be hard to believe that decisions are being made solely for the benefit of the public. It’s not just contracts, either. Both Labour and the Conservatives appear to operate an undeniably undemocratic donor-to-peer and donor-to-electoral candidate pipeline. The need for transparency and accountability in our governance has never been more apparent, and there aren’t many more appropriate places to look than political funding. If the financial gain of MPs or parties is influencing the allocation of public money, resulting in already ultra-rich members of society increasing their wealth further (often while not actually delivering on contracts), then we have a right to know about it. Seeing the cause and effect of political donations should be accessible at the click of a button, which I have set out to achieve. For context, my background is not in politics; I am a scientist. I studied mathematics at university before pursuing a PhD in theoretical physics. During this time, I developed a passion for politics, driven by my frustration with the decisions made in Parliament and the deterioration of the UK. Politics can learn a lot from science. Scientific consensus is potentially the most effective method of forming working theories about the world – it gives us planes, phones, medicine, GPS and so much more. Consensus is achieved through thorough research, robust data and productive discourse; statements must be backed up and referenced and theories must be tested and peer-reviewed. Seven months ago, I found myself asking, why don’t we have the same level of scrutiny in political claims and decisions? Part of the problem is the quality of the data and the disconnect between different datasets. Without solid data, how can you come to solid conclusions? This was the problem I decided to try and solve when I founded Consolidate. Consolidate started as a project looking at the Register of Members’ Interests, an unstructured dataset comprised of plain text in nested web pages and PDFs with varying reporting quality. The structure of this data makes it notoriously tricky to interrogate, but it is imperative to do so. With the online publications of the register spanning the past 27 years, and more than 200 versions, there is a lot of information to process, and this couldn’t be performed manually without considerable effort. So, over a couple of months, after raising a small grant from Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, we scraped and processed 27 years’ worth of data from the register, taking advantage of recent advances in AI to help turn unstructured text into structured data that can be queried and filtered. We have also worked to perform entity matching – the identification of an entity (individual or organisation) using an official source – for private companies that MPs have shareholdings in, or that donated gifts or money to MPs or political parties, or that employed MPs, enabling us to explore the influence of different sectors in political finance. We then built an interactive database that can allow anyone to quickly see the interests of their MP in an accessible format. You can now visit the Consolidate site, find your MP, and see who is funding them, what second jobs they have, or what shareholdings they’ve owned. Empower yourself with this knowledge, and see if you are happy about who they really work for. Search your MP and tell us what the most interesting thing you’ve found out by emailing us or tagging us on social media. We’ll feature your best finds on our daily email. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/funding-mp-register-of-interests-consolidate-uk-election/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/