TheyWorkForYou makes Parliament easier to understand

Most people don’t know the name of their MP, let alone what they’ve been saying in Parliament, or how they’ve voted.

TheyWorkForYou aims to get that changed.

Why bother? It’s just a load of boring old politicians

We know that Parliament can be dry, fusty, and even intimidating. And there’s the problem: keeping up just involves too much effort.

Once you get past those barriers, though, you’ll find information that can entertain you, educate you and—no exaggeration—give you the power to get things changed. We think that should be available to everyone.

That’s where TheyWorkForYou comes in

TheyWorkForYou launched in 2004, taking data and information from official parliamentary sources and adding features that make them easier to understand, like:

A search box, so you can find mentions of any topic, in debates as recent as yesterday or as far back as the 1930s.
Not just the name, but the party, photo and position of each person who speaks, right next to their contribution to any debate.
A unique link for every statement, so you can share precisely what someone said, by email, Twitter or Facebook.
An alert sign-up, so you don’t have to come to the site to see what your MP is saying: it’ll drop straight into your email inbox instead.

And that’s, basically, what we’re all about: making it so easy to follow Parliament, that you, and everyone else, will know exactly what’s going on.

Who runs this site?

TheyWorkForYou is run by mySociety, a UK charity. We build web tools that make democracy a little more accessible. mySociety is not politically-aligned, and its projects are for everyone to use.

We are funded, in part, by donations from people like you. Here’s how to help support our projects.

Still got questions? Check our FAQs.

Credits

Many thanks to mySociety team members and volunteers alike, past and present, for their work on TheyWorkForYou. Including:

Richard Allan
Martin Belam
James Crabtree
James Cronin
Stephen Dunn
Yoz Grahame
Phil Gyford
David Heath
Francis Irving
Ben Laurie
Tom Loosemore
Stefan Magdalinski
Dorian McFarland
Anno Mitchell
Danny O'Brien
Sam Smith
Matthew Somerville
Tom Steinberg
Stuart Tily
Julian Todd
Denise Wilton

Image credits:

Scottish Parliament photo courtesy of Mark Longair, CC BY-SA
Commons debate photo courtesy of UK Parliament/Catherine Bebbington, CC BY-NC
Lords debate photo courtesy of UK House of Lords, parliamentary copyright
London Assembly photo courtesty of Graham Chandler, CC BY-NC-ND
Other parliamentary copyright images (eg: photographs of MPs) are reproduced with the permission of Parliament.

The copyright of Hansard remains under Parliamentary Copyright, used under licence.