How to search UK political donations

The Electoral desk

The Electoral page holds donations, loans, and lobbying returns published by the Electoral Commission. Search stays on that page. A query is part of the public desk. The Commons register of interests is not in those tables. It sits on the member, on Parliament.

A donation row names a donor and a recipient, an amount, and a date, as the Commission published them. Some rows carry a company number. A company number can be followed as a number. A donor name is text. It is not a person page.

Loans are the stored loan rows. Lobbying returns are the consultant lobbying returns we hold. They are not donations. Read the column headings. Do not add the three counts into one figure and call it money in politics.

A donor name is not a person

People on this index come from published roles and identifiers already attached. A donor string is not that. The same letters can appear in a minute, on a donation, and on a Companies House filing without being one human. We do not mint a Person from a donor name.

If the row prints a company number, that number is the identifier. The guide on company numbers is why the number attaches and the name does not. Opening the company record still needs a seat. The number can be read on the Electoral page without that seat.

Do not treat a search result as a finding about the donor or the recipient. The publisher is the Electoral Commission. Cite that file. Institrace is the index that let you find the row.

A worked example

Open /electoral. Before you type, the page shows the live counts for donations, loans, and lobbying, and the date window on the donations tile. Those numbers are the stored rows, not a claim about all UK political finance.

Search a recipient or a donor by the words you have. The page returns a page of rows. If you search a company number, the desk can send you to that company. The company page asks for a seat. The donation rows you already saw stay the Commission's rows.

If you wanted the member's register, leave this desk and open Parliament. Speeches are Hansard. A donation does not become a speech. Hansard and MPs keeps that split.

What this is not

Read the date window on the donations tile before you compare two years. A row outside the window is not in this holding. Loans have their own count. Lobbying returns have their own count. If you publish a total, say which of the three you added, and do not add them unless you mean to. The page does not print how many donation rows attach to a council. That figure is not a tile. If you want to know whether a council's name appears as a recipient, search the recipient and read the rows. Do not expect the council's own page to grow a donation count. Papers and donations are different holdings. A regulated donee and a council with a similar name are not automatically the same body. Read the recipient string as the Commission printed it. Then, if you have a company number on the row, use the number. If you do not, stop at the name. The search box will tempt you to run on. The row in front of you is the whole of what that search proved. Save the Commission reference if the row shows one. That reference is how you get back to the same line tomorrow. A screenshot of a sorted table is not a reference. The reference is the row.

A search that returns nothing means nothing matched the words you typed in the rows we hold. It does not mean the Commission never recorded the gift. Check the spelling of the recipient. Try the company number if you have it. Then cite the row you actually opened.

It is not a person index. It is not the register of members' interests. It is not a statement that a donation bought a decision. The row is what the Commission published.

Search on this desk is public. Other parts of the site, including full text of papers, need a seat. Start a trial for that half.