Money & Power · Cross-register patterns
The money that moves through UK politics
Every fact below is on a public register. Some are on the Electoral Commission’s donations log. Some are on gov.uk’s Contracts Finder. Some are on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Some are on the APPG register or the gov.uk transparency feeds. Each one publishes its own slice on its own page in its own format. Reading them side by side is what produces the picture below; that is what no other tool currently does.
Headline cross-references
The four strongest patterns in the data. Each one is a join of two registers nobody else joins.
Rishi Sunak ↔ Hoover Institution. Gavin Williamson ↔ RTC Education. Jeremy Hunt + George Freeman ↔ Oxford Institute. Three MPs all ↔ GB News. Same body pays them as employees AND donates to their politics.
PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young between them hold £120M+ in declared public-sector contracts and have given £2.5M+ in declared political donations. Microsoft, SSE, Randox, Grant Thornton same dual-role.
Hong Kong Government paid for 30 MP trips totalling £280k. Conservative Friends of Israel paid for 98. The Qatari, Saudi, Taiwanese and Indian foreign ministries all appear in the top tier. The full paymaster league.
Visit /donors/pricewaterhousecoopers-llp and you get the political donations PLUS the public-sector contracts PLUS the APPG funding under one cream paper. Two government registers in one frame.
Sector and contest pivots
USA £617k, Saudi £214k, Qatar £203k, UAE £171k. 575 declared donations from outside the UK.
2016 Owen Smith £400k. 2022 Truss + Sunak £400k. The donors writing cheques into specific leadership contests, by candidate.
Twickenham £997k. Richmond Park CLP £667k from just 20 donations. West Suffolk £491k. Which UK seats get bankrolled.
£27M of declared bequests to UK parties. Conservatives lead. Sinn Féin's £2.8M from 6 estates includes one £2.4M individual.
Policy Connect runs 6 lobby groups. Hanbury, GK Strategy, Lodestone, CalComms, Stewart Public Affairs all on 3. The lobby-firm league.
BAE Systems pays for 3 different APPGs. Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust pays for 2. The funders buying parliamentary access.
Compliance pivots
14,859 donations declared 90+ days after acceptance. 1,054 declared over a year late. Worst gap: 13 years.
166 donations the EC ruled impermissible. Reform UK appears repeatedly on recent direct-bank-transfer entries.
383 declared donations from 65 trusts. The beneficial-ownership shield UK law allows.
Sources, in order: Electoral Commission donations register, gov.uk Contracts Finder, parliament.uk Register of Members’ Financial Interests, mySociety APPG membership dataset, gov.uk transparency feeds. All five refresh on weekly or daily crons. Each figure on this page is derived from current data; click through to any tile for the underlying rows.