To rebuild public trust in our political system we need better data, stronger checks, tighter rules and ultimately, systematic reform.
Over the last few months, 50 volunteers helped the TheyWorkForYou team go through the Register of Members’ Financial Interests (RMFI), line by line, for all 650 MPs. We were looking for specific bits of information, but also to more generally understand the state of the Register and how rules on transparency are working in practice.
We have many ideas on how to improve that transparency, but the goal is not ‘just’ good documentation of office holders’ conflicts of interest: rather, the minimisation and elimination of those interests in the first place. To better align politicians’ behaviour with public expectations, there is no substitute for a stricter set of rules around MPs’ financial interests.
As such, we are making four categories of recommendations, stepping from incremental change to improve data collection, to systemic reform of the funding landscape.
- Better data collection to achieve more accurate interests information
- Stronger checks to make sure the interests information is reliable
- Tighter rules so there are fewer unacceptable interests in the first place
- Systematic reform to decrease the role of money in the political system.
As part of this project we have also added two new features to TheyWorkForYou:
- Election registers – adding more details and summaries to disclosures made after the last election.
- Highlighted interests – bringing together interests related to industries with low public support and governments of not free countries and offering MPs opportunity for additional context.
Over the next few months, we will release follow-on work from this project, including adding Registers of Interests for the devolved parliaments to TheyWorkForYou, releasing more information on APPGs, and a blog series on conflicts of interest declared in Parliament.
For now, do read the report. We’ll also be discussing our findings with Chris Cook of the Financial Times and Rose Whiffen from Transparency International today at 1pm: reserve your spot here.
