Privacy
What personal data OpenInterests publishes, what it collects when you visit, and what you can do about it.
Who we are
OpenInterests is run by Jason Cartwright, an individual, who is the data controller for this site. It is part of OpenCommons, a small family of sites that make UK public registers easier to search.
To get in touch about anything on this page, including a request about your own data, use the contact details at jasoncartwright.com.
What this site publishes
OpenInterests republishes two public registers about money in UK politics. Both name people.
- MPs and peers
- Current and former members of both Houses, from the UK Parliament Members API: name, House, party, constituency, whether they still sit and when they left, and their official portrait. Portraits are copied from Parliament and served from our own storage.
- Financial interests
- What MPs declare in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, from Parliament's Interests API. A declaration is shown as Parliament publishes it, and may name whoever paid or gave a benefit, including a private individual.
- Donations
- Donations reported to the Electoral Commission, from 2001 to now: the donor's name and status, the recipient, the amount, the type and the dates. This includes donations from individuals. The Commission publishes a postcode and company number for organisations that give, but not for individuals, so we hold neither for an individual donor.
Parliament's data is used under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0, and the Electoral Commission's under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Matching records to people
Registers spell names in different ways, so we link records to one page per person or organisation:
- MPs and peers are matched by Parliament's own member id.
- Individual donors are matched by name alone, because the Electoral Commission gives a new donor id for almost every donation. Two different people with the same name can end up on one page. A donor page is not proof that the donations are all from one person.
- Organisations are matched by name, sometimes by close spelling, and a donor organisation is linked to OpenCompanies only by the company number the Electoral Commission publishes for it.
If we have linked you to records that aren't yours, tell us and we'll fix it.
Why we publish it
We rely on legitimate interests: the public interest in being able to see, search and connect information about money and influence in politics, which the law already requires to be published. The site exists for transparency and to support journalism and research.
A donation to a political party can reveal someone's political views, which the law treats as more sensitive. We publish only what the Electoral Commission already publishes, and add nothing to it about the people named.
The official register comes first
The source registers are authoritative. If something is wrong, the correction has to be made there, and it will then flow through to this site:
- MPs' and peers' details, and financial interests: UK Parliament (interests are the responsibility of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards).
- Donations: the Electoral Commission.
Keeping up with the source
We refresh the data from the sources regularly. When a record changes at the source, the next refresh updates it here. Our import does not yet remove a record that has been deleted from the source register, so if something has been taken down or withdrawn there, tell us and we will remove it here.
Objecting or asking for removal
If you are named on this site and want to object, or ask for something to be corrected or removed, get in touch through jasoncartwright.com. Say which page it is and why. We will weigh your request against the public interest in the register, and tell you what we decide.
Search engines
Pages for members and individual donors are public, are listed in our sitemap, and can be indexed by search engines.
What we collect when you visit
Cookies
The public site sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. The only cookies the site can set are Django's login and security cookies for the staff admin area, which is used by the site's operator, not visitors.
Analytics
Each page loads two cookie-free analytics scripts:
- Plausible, an EU-hosted service that sets no cookies.
- fivebar, which also sets no cookies. It receives the page's address, the page you came from, your window width, how long you spent on the page, how far you read, how quickly it loaded and any clicks on links to other sites. It keeps only daily totals. It uses your IP address and browser details to count visitors but does not keep them.
Neither lets us see who you are, or follow you from one day to the next. A content blocker that blocks them will not stop the site working.
Searches
Search is a plain web address (/search/?q=…). We do not save what you
search for.
Server logs
The site's own code keeps no log of the pages you visit and stores no IP addresses. Your IP address passes through the server and network that deliver the page, as with any website.
Other places your browser connects to
- opencommons.uk, for the shared stylesheet and the Inter font. It is run by the same person.
- membersphotos.openinterests.uk, for members' portraits, served from Cloudflare R2 storage.
- plausible.io and fiveb.ar, for analytics.
Links to Parliament, the Electoral Commission, OpenCompanies and OpenPostcodes are ordinary links. Nothing is sent to those sites unless you follow one.
Where the data is processed
The site runs on a server at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany. Members' portraits are stored with Cloudflare. Plausible and fivebar process analytics in the EU, under their own privacy policies.
How long we keep it
- Register data: for as long as it is on the public register, and until we act on a request to remove it.
- Your searches: not kept.
- Analytics: overall counts held by Plausible and fivebar, with no record of what any one visitor did.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask to see the data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict how we use it, and object to us using it. Get in touch through jasoncartwright.com.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Changes
If what we collect or publish changes, this page will change with it.
Last updated: 11 October 2026