About

Use Hansard's search to find something. Use Where MPs Stand to understand it: who said what, where they stand, and the exact words to prove it.

This site is in beta

Where MPs Stand is new. It works, but it is still being tested and improved, and you may find mistakes: a briefing that misses an important contribution, a label that is wrong, or a page that does not work as it should. Every briefing links to its sources, so you can always check what was actually said. Please tell us about anything wrong; corrections are published on the corrections page.

No single site does everything well. The best results come from using several, each for what it does best: the other resources page lists the ones we rely on and recommend.

Why it exists

Hansard is the full, official, word-for-word record of Parliament, and Parliament's own search is the right tool for finding things in it. If you know what you are looking for (a phrase, a debate, everything a particular MP said on a given day), use Hansard's search. It is fast, complete and authoritative. Every source shown here links back to the official record.

What a search cannot do is answer a question. Ask "where do rural and city MPs differ on onshore wind?" and a search gives you thousands of matching speeches. Working out who said what, from which side, in what role and with what argument is days of reading. That is the gap Where MPs Stand fills.

What it does differently

• It answers by theme, not keyword. Ask in plain English. It finds relevant speeches even when they use different words, and writes a short briefing on the positions taken.
• It shows who stands where. Speakers are grouped in the way that explains the differences: government ministers, the opposition frontbench and backbenchers; party; MPs for city, town and rural seats, defined by the size of the urban area from official census data; region or nation; and, when you ask, gender or age at the time.
• It knows who people were at the time. Each speaker's office, party, constituency and seat type are shown as they were on the day they spoke. A minister is labelled a minister only for speeches made while in office.
• It looks for balance, not just matches. The evidence is chosen to cover the different groups, not simply the speeches that repeat your keywords most often. A summary shows how many contributions came from which groups and parties.
• It covers votes as well as words. Where a question is about votes, it reports how members voted and who rebelled against their party, separately from what was said.
• It keeps standing briefings up to date. Topic briefings on the issues Parliament keeps returning to are rewritten as new debates arrive, with earlier versions kept.
• Briefings can be shared and cited. Each has its own permanent address, stamped with the date it was prepared and the most recent record it drew on, and can be copied with its sources or printed.

Why not just ask an AI chatbot?

General AI chatbots answer from memory and can invent quotations, dates and positions. Where MPs Stand is built so that it cannot quietly do that.

• It uses only the record. Briefings are written solely from the Hansard records found for your question. No outside knowledge is used.
• Every claim is cited. Each point links to the exact speech. Opening it shows the verbatim text with the quoted passage highlighted, the column or question reference, and links to the official report.
• Citations are checked. Every citation, and every quotation, is checked automatically word for word against the original text. Anything the briefing says without a source is counted under it and can be shown, never passed off as sourced.
• It says when there is nothing. If the record does not cover your question, it says "No records found".
• It is neutral and transparent. It reports in neutral language and expresses no view of its own. It shows how it read your question as filters you can edit, and the same filters always return the same sources. The methodology explains how.

What is covered

Despite the name, it is not only MPs. Peers, select committees and the people who give evidence to them, and members of the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly are all here too. MPs were simply the ones who fitted on the sign.

• Records: the House of Commons, House of Lords and Westminster Hall; written questions and answers; written ministerial statements; Public Bill Committee debates; and every division (vote).
• Also: early day motions, select committees (inquiries, reports, witnesses and oral evidence), the devolved parliaments, MPs' registered interests, donations to MPs, company roles and all-party groups.
• Period: from the 1997 general election to the present, updated twice a day. The Lords record starts in November 1999, Westminster Hall in 2000, written questions in 2001 and written statements in 2002. Early day motions, Commons votes and election results (general and by-elections) start in 1997.
• Access: free and open, with no account and no cookies.

Not covered yet, and where to look meanwhile

• Before 1997: use TheyWorkForYou (Commons debates back to 1918) or Historic Hansard (1803 to 2005).
• Email alerts when a member speaks or a subject is raised: TheyWorkForYou alerts. This site offers RSS feeds instead.
• What happens next week: Parliament's What's on calendar, and Parliament TV to watch.
• The law as it now stands, after a bill is passed and amended: legislation.gov.uk.

Who runs it

Where MPs Stand is an independent project run by Rob Mitchell. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Parliament, any political party or any campaign.

The site's code is open source, under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL-3.0), so anyone can see exactly how it chooses sources and writes briefings, and anyone who runs a changed copy as a website must share their changes the same way: github.com/rj-mitchell/wheretheystand.

Contact: admin@wherempsstand.com. To report an error in a briefing, use "Report a problem" under the briefing or the report form.

How it is funded

The site is free to use. Each briefing costs money to write, and the server costs money to run, so it is funded by donations from readers. Daily limits keep the costs within what donations cover.

If you find it useful, you can support the site, with a one-off or a monthly donation of any size.

Donations policy

• Donations are accepted from individuals only.
• No donations are accepted from political parties, elected representatives, campaigns, lobbying firms or organisations seeking to influence policy.
• Donations buy no influence over what the site says, which questions it answers or how it answers them.
• Any single donation over £500 will be acknowledged on this page, with the donor's agreement, or returned.

Briefings are written by AI from the cited Hansard records. Always check the sources.