Alex Parsons
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alexparsons.bsky.social
Alex Parsons
@alexparsons.bsky.social
1.2K followers 870 following 2.5K posts
Democracy Programme Lead / Senior Researcher - mySociety/TheyWorkForYou. Also for some reason Postman Pat reviews.
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alexparsons.bsky.social
Foodie friends: can't find the expiry date on this, do they go off?
Canned alien
November 23, 2025 at 3:14 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
The real question
Islington north (UK Parliament constituency)
November 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Where this Meg Russell quote in Ian Dunt's book I think has an easy answer: the theory of what MPs want is wrong
‘I genuinely struggle to understand why it hasn’t worked,’ says Meg Russell, one of the country’s foremost authorities on parliamentary procedure. ‘I originally devised that mechanism and was then a specialist adviser to the Wright committee. I proposed it in order that they could use it to do bold things. But they’re not doing what it was for.
November 19, 2025 at 8:01 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Yeah, and sympathetic to that when I wrote it up more - but it also means that a wider norm can't be set, and that it's already led to a "PM apologies for not recusing himself when there was a conflict of interest" story www.mysociety.org/2025/07/02/w...
This was a big conversation last year, and there was never actually a promise to stop doing this — just a much more limited change that they would stop accepting clothes as a donation (which as the Guardian points out, was only ever a small proportion of gifts received). There is an emerging pattern with ministers (examples for David Lammy and Jonathan Reynolds) accepting the hospitality ticket, but donating to the associated club charity an equivalent amount. The Starmer example is tricky, because the argument made for him is security issues around not being in a private box (in this case donated by the club). But it’s also true that when MPs are considering if they want a free day out, they can look to the top and see tacit approval in what ministers accept. Unless there’s a rule change, or leadership from the top to set a norm, this unpopular practice is just going to continue. There are entirely predictable “here are the freebies MPs got over the last five years” news stories that can be avoided at the next election —but it needs leadership now.
November 18, 2025 at 6:47 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Jonathan Reynolds donated the equiv of his ticket to charity (he's done this approach before), Josh Simons got his tickets upgraded www.theyworkforyou.com/interests/ca...
November 18, 2025 at 12:28 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Again, on the leadership from the top point: if you're a Labour MP why not have a nice day out
Kier Starmer - £1000 for tickets and hospitality from Arsonal Football Club This entry in the context of a run of these.
November 18, 2025 at 12:21 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
So for the freebie taxonomy, here's a "third party buying a gift" (KKCG sending Harriett Baldwin to the opera) and a "local authority passing on their freebie ticket" (Chi Onwurah from Liverpool City Council for Mercury Prize)
November 18, 2025 at 12:17 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Kemi Badenoch got another donation (50k) from JCB (and Andrew Griffith 25k)
November 18, 2025 at 12:15 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Liz Roberts also got to go in the front of the train
November 18, 2025 at 12:14 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
In nice work if you can get it (you can't): Rishi Sunak's 3rd payment from the Hoover Institute for £40k.
November 18, 2025 at 12:12 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
And, obviously the parliamentary rule should change here, but it's also perfectly within the power of a political party to set down a norm they expect their MPs to follow. The norm Starmer sets is "they're fine". www.mysociety.org/2025/07/02/w...
When a new Register of Members’ Financial Interests comes out, we make that available in more formats in TheyWorkForYou, and we look at the new entries to see if there are any interesting patterns. It was noteworthy looking at the release a few weeks ago to see five MPs registering free football tickets, including Keir Starmer. This was a big conversation last year, and there was never actually a promise to stop doing this — just a much more limited change that they would stop accepting clothes as a donation (which as the Guardian points out, was only ever a small proportion of gifts received). There is an emerging pattern with ministers (examples for David Lammy and Jonathan Reynolds) accepting the hospitality ticket, but donating to the associated club charity an equivalent amount. The Starmer example is tricky, because the argument made for him is security issues around not being in a private box (in this case donated by the club). But it’s also true that when MPs are considering if they want a free day out, they can look to the top and see tacit approval in what ministers accept. Unless there’s a rule change, or leadership from the top to set a norm, this unpopular practice is just going to continue. There are entirely predictable “here are the freebies MPs got over the last five years” news stories that can be avoided at the next election —but it needs leadership now.
November 14, 2025 at 12:13 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Following up last RT, it is stunning how much Parliament's rules are out of step with not just the private sector, but the civil service and local councils research.mysociety.org/html/beyond-...
While the Code of Conduct for MPs only talks about disclosing gifts, guidance for civil servants is much more rooted in offences under the Bribery Act. The Civil Service Code more directly says that civil servants should not "accept gifts or hospitality or receive other benefits from anyone which might reasonably be seen to compromise your personal judgement or integrity". 2009 Cabinet Office Guidance breaks this down further with points around purpose, proportionality and conflicts of interest. Individual departments give more precise guidance, for example the Single Source Regulations Office (loosely influential because they publish their guidance online) talks about gifts being of a nominal/notional value, for an appropriate reason, not at an inappropriate time, and being one-off or irregular. In that case they also talk about a nominal amount of £50 for a single gift — and no more than £200 from the same source. There is no lower threshold for registering gifts. All gifts made, even if declined, need to be stored in the SSRO's registry. The ICO's policy allows that sub-£5 gifts do not need to be recorded. In some areas, councillors have far stricter rules on disclosures and non-acceptance than MPs, with Merton Council requiring gifts of £25 or greater to be registered. The basic ideas that "smaller gifts need to be recorded" and "there are some gifts you should not accept" are not radical ideas: they are standard practice through the public and private sectors. Code of Conduct should be revised to lower the declaration limit and introduce, for the first time, principles that guide whether they should accept certain types of gift at all.
November 14, 2025 at 12:10 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
"We're creating a problem we're also the solution to" is again, much less convincing than they want it to be.
November 14, 2025 at 10:32 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Passive voice here, but the barriers aren't just dropping by themselves, they're dropping because of software you're creating and selling!
The barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially—and we predict that they’ll continue to do so. With the correct setup, threat actors can now use agentic AI systems for extended periods to do the work of entire teams of experienced hackers: analyzing target systems, producing exploit code, and scanning vast datasets of stolen information more efficiently than any human operator. Less experienced and resourced groups can now potentially perform large-scale attacks of this nature.
November 14, 2025 at 10:27 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
None of this is nearly as mitigating as the writer wants it to be www.anthropic.com/news/disrupt...
At this point they had to convince Claude—which is extensively trained to avoid harmful behaviors—to engage in the attack. They did so by jailbreaking it, effectively tricking it to bypass its guardrails. They broke down their attacks into small, seemingly innocent tasks that Claude would execute without being provided the full context of their malicious purpose. They also told Claude that it was an employee of a legitimate cybersecurity firm, and was being used in defensive testing.
November 14, 2025 at 10:24 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
One of the reasons freebies matter is that, if behaving ethically, politicians should recuse themselves from issues they should actually take an interest in
November 13, 2025 at 8:45 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Yes, given that SIs can't be amended, requiring one-org-per-order would be appropriate.
further suggestion is to introduce votes on the proscription of individual organisations (including any aliases). The current process, following parliamentary convention for statutory instruments, allows the government to present a list of organisations for Parliament to approve, but does not allow amendments to remove individual organisations from that list.74 To allow Parliament to vote on individual organisations, the Terrorism Act 2000 would need to be amended to require a separate statutory instrument for each organisation being proscribed. 82 Recommendation 82: If a proscription is based on intelligence material, the Intelligence and Security Committee should be invited to consider any proposed proscription order, and where possible, report to Parliament ahead of any debate and decision on an order. 83 Recommendation 83: The Terrorism Act 2000 should be amended so that only one organisation (including any aliases) can be added to the list of proscribed organisations in e
November 11, 2025 at 11:25 AM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Oh no
November 8, 2025 at 12:29 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
So this is pretty bad I think. What seems like a considered attempt to not make a public donation by splitting it across multiple "sources" just below the threshold.

I think debateable what "source" means here but the correct thing for Nandy would have been to declare them regardless.
November 7, 2025 at 1:05 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
November 4, 2025 at 6:07 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
A few for mercury prize (there's a few more for other things in there, just logging some multiples for notes) www.theyworkforyou.com/interests/ca...
November 4, 2025 at 5:39 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
In Freebies, Ascot. Note the sub £300 entries where those MPs have previously recorded a gift from Ascot (the rule is cumulative).
November 4, 2025 at 5:35 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
In tracking gifts from non-free countries, the Saudi Arabia APPG went on a trip. Will check in to see what the APPG itself declares in the next release www.theyworkforyou.com/interests/ca...
November 4, 2025 at 5:31 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
Continued labour deputy leader donations (over £1,500).
November 4, 2025 at 5:25 PM
alexparsons.bsky.social
This is a bit related to a shift from EDMs to open letters, where backbenchers are lobbying the government in public (with more caveats than EDMs allow) www.mysociety.org/2025/10/21/s...
Similarly, open letters are free from the format restrictions and word count of EDMs (a single sentence of less than 250 words). This can be important as many letters represent a group of government MPs trying to change the government position. Being able to write more is important in referencing previous government actions, anchoring the change in agreed principles and so on, while still being a critical signal. This fits with a general change in usage of EDMs. While the number of actual EDMs proposed per year have remained roughly the same, overall signatures have dropped by almost half since 2015 (33k to 15k), and far fewer petitions get a large number of signatures. The average number of signatures per EDM has dropped from 27 to 12. Some of this activity has moved to the new social open letter format.
November 4, 2025 at 7:43 AM