Every year, millions of pounds pour into Westminster – into the accounts of the people, groups, organisations and parties that work and operate at the centre of government. Although most of this money must technically be disclosed to the public, the way that information is reported, stored and displayed almost guarantees the records will not be widely scrutinised.

Payment records are spread across different government websites, often split into small files covering short periods of time and regularly published with duplicate entries, spelling mistakes and other errors. The data required to examine the financial interests of just one Member of Parliament is laborious to gather.

Tortoise Media and Sky News have programmatically collected and analysed thousands of donations and payment records from MPs, political parties, and all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs). The resulting database is an extensive, though not comprehensive, record of the financial interests in Westminster.

Because the purpose of this database is to look at exterior sources of money and influence, it does not cover the everyday expenses required to run a central government's main legislative body. Notably, you won't find any reference to Members' annual base salary of £84,144. Nor will you find references to the additional compensation made by government ministers and MPs with other extra responsibilities.

It also doesn’t cover outgoings. For example, members sometimes report that they've donated a sum to charity or given it to their local party, but our database doesn't make that distinction. (You can find more detail on how and why we made decisions like this in our publicly-accessible methodology.)

What the database does include is the following datasets for the entirety of the last parliament – from its start on 19 December 2019 to the most recent disclosures:

• From the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: Earnings from secondary employment, donations, gifts and other benefits (including international travel) for all sitting and former members of the current parliament. (Excludes financial interests for which no monetary value is given.)
• From the Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups: Donations, services, gifts and other benefits for all APPGs that have operated at any point during the current parliament, as well as membership lists for each group
• From the Electoral Commission: Donations, gifts and other benefits received by all political parties currently represented in the House of Commons

Let’s see where your Member of Parliament fits into it all.

See more: Methodology, corrections and clarifications, and credits