Great round-up here from @alexparsons.bsky.social at mySociety about when FOI may prove more useful than parliamentary questions.

#mySociety #joinCFOI #accountability #transparency

Since the general election, we think are there are three factors that might be influencing the dramatic decline in registered groups: New officer rule – there’s a new rule that MPs are now only allowed to be an officer of a maximum of six groups. The reduced size of the opposition – the ‘all party’ nature of APPGs means that they must have at least one member of the official opposition as an officer. Before Parliament was dissolved for the election in May, the then Labour opposition had 206 MPs. Now, the Conservative opposition has 121 MPs. Conservative Lords are allowed to be officers of APPGs, but the APPG Chair must be an MP. Summer recess admin delay – in order to meet the deadline for this register, groups had to hold their new AGM to elect officers before summer recess began on 30 July. This gave them just a couple of weeks after the election, which was a hectic time, especially for the majority of MPs who were new to Parliament, and busy setting up their offices.

3/ ... #MySociety have a blogpost looking at the new groups www.mysociety.org/2024/08/29/m..., theorising why so many have disappeared: groups need to have at least one Tory MP, there's fewer of them, and they're a bit distracted

TheyWorkForYou is 20 years old and is starting a new project! TWFY is a stalwart of British online democracy, a tool for tracking MPs and their voting interests and enabling their constituents to contact them directly. Their new project: WhoFundsThem — is sel…

TheyWorkForYou is 20 years old and is starting a new project!
https://alecmuffett.com/article/109794
#MySociety #TheyWorkForYou