The search is for a usable public truth
Politics already keeps a record. Most of us never read it.
Votes are published. Interests are declared. Manifestos are written down. Speeches are transcribed. The failure is not that the evidence does not exist. The failure is that the electorate has been invited to treat judgement as a once-a-cycle mood, rather than as a continuing civic duty.
Elector and taxpayer are not the same person
The franchise is wider than the income-tax net. A pensioner on the state pension, a parent on Universal Credit, a student, a disabled person on PIP, a carer, a low-paid worker under the personal allowance — all can vote. All live with the consequences of housing, the NHS, crime, care and benefits. Calling this “a taxpayers’ website” would quietly write them out of the jury.
Public money is still the second claim, and it is a real one. Salaries, offices, and ministerial travel come from the Consolidated Fund, not from a whip-round of higher-rate taxpayers. A £34,000 departmental trip is not only an insult to people who filed a self-assessment. It is an insult to the pensioner whose bus route was cut and to the claimant whose assessment was delayed. Stewardship of common funds is owed to the whole public, not to a tax band.
So the site speaks to two overlapping groups without collapsing them:
- Electors — anyone eligible to vote. Their job is to keep reading the record between elections.
- The public purse — everyone who depends on, or contributes to, what that purse buys. Waste and capture are scored because they steal from a shared pot, not because only taxpayers may complain.
The voter’s half of the contract
Representation is not a subscription you forget until the renewal notice. An MP is hired to speak, vote, declare conflicts, and pursue a programme they asked to be judged on. If we only look up when a campaign video arrives, we outsource the whole appraisal to whoever shouts loudest that week.
This site exists to make the opposite habit cheap: open the record of the person who sits for your place, see the evidence, and keep looking after the count is done.
The MP’s half of the contract
None of this is a demand that politicians be saints. It is a demand that they be treatable as professionals. In any other paid job, the work product is reviewable. Targets slip; people explain; next quarter is different. Artificial intelligence does not invent a secret dossier. It reads what is already public — Hansard, division lists, the Register, pledge trackers, published posts — fast enough that the review can be continuous.
That is a benefit to the honest member as much as a pressure on the careless one. If the same rules apply to a minister and a backbencher, a well-documented vote against a whipped line can raise a consistency score. A viral clip cannot.
Why “source of truth” is a discipline, not a slogan
A site that weighted scores by how many people clicked a name would not be a record. It would be a heat map of fame and fury. Nigel Farage can win Clacton and still be red on declaration rules. Richard Burgon can be little-searched and still be green on consistency with his own stated positions. Mixing those facts with page-view counts would destroy both.
So the Commons Account separates three things and refuses to blend them:
- The score — integrity, promise-keeping, performance, role-adjusted.
- The evidence — the votes, declarations and pledge statuses underneath.
- Public interest — how many people opened the card. Displayed later, if at all, as a scrutiny counter. Never as a weight.