Frequently Asked Questions

What is this site for?

mpdata.uk collects and structures publicly available data on Members of Parliament — their voting records, debate contributions, registered financial interests, and party funding. The goal is to make information that already exists easier to find, compare, and understand. We do not add editorial judgment about individual MPs.

Where does the data come from?

The primary source is the official Parliament API, which provides voting records, debate contributions, MP details, and registered interests. Party donation data comes from the Electoral Commission. Full details of data sources and update timestamps are on our Data Sources page.

How current is the data?

Voting and contribution data is updated nightly. Registered interests, member details, and government posts are updated regularly — exact timestamps for each dataset are on the Data Sources page.

Why do you show metrics like voting participation rates and debate counts?

Because they are factual, measurable, and drawn from the public record. Voting participation, debate contributions, and registered interests are all things Parliament itself records — we surface that data in one place in a structured, comparable form.

That said, we are deliberate about what these numbers can and cannot tell you.

So what can't the numbers tell me?

Quite a lot. A high voting participation rate does not mean an MP is scrutinising legislation carefully — it may mean they are voting along party lines without independent analysis. A low debate contribution count may mean an MP is doing detailed committee work, constituency casework, or extensive research that simply doesn't show up in Hansard. Similarly a high number of registered interests does not automatically mean they are ignoring their constituents in favour of carrying out other activities. For example some MPs take up legal action on behalf of their constituents and receive pro bono legal aid which is counted among their registered interests.

There is a well-documented problem with measurement - when a metric becomes a target, it tends to stop being a good measure of the thing it was meant to capture. An MP optimising their debate count or participation rate for appearances would be gaming numbers rather than doing their job. I've written about this sort of problem in more depth on my blog in relation to Goodhart's Law.

There is a related problem in how institutions manage information: what gets counted and recorded reflects what is easy to count, not necessarily what matters. Parliamentary activity that is visible — votes, speeches, written questions — is recorded. The phone calls, the casework surgeries, the behind-the-scenes negotiations are not. This site can only show you what Parliament records.

Are you making judgments about MPs?

No. The site presents data. Where we provide context — such as how an MP's participation rate compares to others — that comparison is statistical, not editorial. We do not characterise any level of activity as good or bad.

How are registered interests handled?

Every interest is displayed exactly as submitted to Parliament's Register of Members' Financial Interests. We add structure — categories, filters, comparisons — to help users navigate the data, but we do not add narrative judgment about whether any interest is appropriate or problematic.

What is the AI-generated content on MP profiles?

MP profile summaries are generated using an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic). These summaries are produced exclusively from structured data we hold — the model is explicitly instructed not to draw on its own knowledge of MPs. All statistics cited in summaries are drawn directly from our database. Summaries are dated so you can see when they were generated.

AI-generated prose should be treated as an accessible entry point into the data, not as an authoritative source. For definitive information, refer to the underlying statistics and official Hansard records.

Can I use this data for research or journalism?

Yes. The underlying data is sourced from Parliament and the Electoral Commission, both of which publish it as open data. If you use mpdata.uk as a starting point, we would ask that you verify figures against primary sources before publishing.

Who are you?

I’m a freelance developer and occasional blogger. Sometimes I write about politics and in writing a post about Reform UK found the way existing sites presented this data quite unsatisfactory. It tended towards sensationalist articles of the "MP rakes in thousands of pounds from a second job" style without giving any frame of reference for the figures - comparisons to other MPs, changes over time, and so on. I then discovered the parliament.uk API which is the source for most of this data. I created this project as a way of understanding and interpreting that data, to use it in my blog and hopefully to make it useful to other people too.