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Frequently asked questions


Is this the whole of Hansard?

TheyWorkForYou currently contains:

  • all debates, written answers, and written ministerial statements in the House of Commons Hansard back to the General Election of June 2001;
  • the same for the House of Lords Hansard (so as yet no Grand Committees) back to around November 1999;
  • everything in the various Northern Ireland (Transitional) Assembly debates.
  • everything in the Scottish Parliament official report. (check with Mark!)

But this is by no means everything. Think of what we've done thus far as a mere taster of what could be possible. In the future we plan to incorporate the gems to be found in Parliamentary Committees, where many MPs and Peers do good solid unheralded work improving legislation. If you want the complete, definitive record, go to the UK Parliament site, and you might be able to find what you want.

How do you moderate comments?

Ideally, we won't. If everyone keeps to the House Rules, that is. But we're not naive enough to think that life online is that simple. TheyWorkForYou.com operates a 'reactive moderation' policy. We will only check whether a comment breaches our House Rules if someone lets us know of their concerns via the 'Report this Comment' link, which can be found next to every comment. If we decide that the comment has breached our House Rules, we will delete it and let the original author know via email. We will also give them opportunity to rephrase and resubmit their orginal comment. If we deem the comment to be legit, we'll leave it up, and email the complainant to let them know why. We will do our utmost to respond to reports of potential breaches of our House Rules within forty-eight hours, but please bear in mind that this service is run by volunteers, and sometimes it might take us slightly longer.

What is your privacy policy?

Our privacy policy is very simple:

  1. We guarantee we will not sell or distribute any personal information you share with us
  2. We will not be sending you unsolicited email
  3. We will gladly show you the personal data we store about you in order to run the website.
What is your cookie policy?

We use cookies to save you from having to repeatedly log in to the site, and also to remember your postcode. The site will work with cookies disabled, but it won't be as good.

What's that weird 'extreme tracker' and 'urchin' javascript I spy in your page source?

We use Extreme DB and Google Analytics to track aggregated traffic through the website. It captures nothing that you won't find in an Apache logfile, but has an interface we like, and is dead easy to use. Rest assured, we only track usage data for one reason only: to help us understand how we can make the site work better for you lot. If anyone wants to whinge about 'Web Bugs', expect short shrift.

What is RSS?

RSS files contain information about a list of things: diary entries, speeches, etc. and are formatted to be readable by computer programs, rather than humans. So what use are they? You can use a program called a news reader to store the locations of RSS feeds, and each time one is updated - with new diary entries or speeches - you can easily see what's new. It saves you visiting web pages on the off-chance anything new has appeared. Popular RSS readers are Sharpreader for Windows or NetNewsWire Lite for Macs. Bloglines is an online RSS reader.

How is the voting record decided?

The voting record is not affected by what MPs and Peers have said, only how they voted in relation to that topic in the house - i.e. "aye" or "no". Votes on each topic were examined, and strength of support determined based on these votes. Follow the "votes" link next to each topic for details. Additionally, in many votes, MPs and Peers are told how to vote ('whipped') by their parties. Since the Whip is secret, we have to assume, like the Speaker, that all votes are free.

Why should I read in more depth than just the numbers?

A few people have asked why we publish statistics on how often MPs use alliterative phrases, such as "she sells seashells". It has even been mentioned in the House of Commons.

Simply put, we realise that data such as the number of debates spoken in means little in terms of an MP's actual performance. MPs do lots of useful things which we don't count yet, and some which we never could. Even when we do, a count doesn't measure the quality of an MPs contribution.

After reading media reports like this one in The Times, and hearing from real MP's researchers who have admitted to tabling questions to increase their boss's rankings, we became concerned about the use of these statistics.

We've done two things. We've added the silly statistic, to catch your attention. And we've removed the absolute rankings. Instead of saying an MP is exactly 5th for giving out verbiage in the chamber, we now just say that they are "well above average".

Our advice — when you're judging your MP, read some of their speeches, check out their website, even go to a local meeting and ask them a question. Use TheyWorkForYou as a gateway, rather than a simple place to find a number measuring competence.

If you have suggestions for other metrics we could add which would be useful, send them to the usual address. We've got a few ideas ourselves, to keep you on your toes.

Do you have the data as a spreadsheet file, XML or in an API?

Yes. We have an API (Application Programming Interface) which gives you the power to do almost anything with our data. Alternatively, you can get XML files, which can be loaded into many spreadsheets. If you just need a spreadsheet of MPs, you'll find one on the right hand side of this page. Please mail us if you want help working out how to use the data, or want to hire us to make something specific for you.

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