Update: some APPGs are back
WhoFundsThem is our new project looking to uncover the influence of money in politics. You can donate or volunteer to support this project.
Last month, we asked “What happened to all the APPGs?” because between March and April over a third of All Party Parliamentary Groups were deregistered, from 722 down to just 445. This story was covered in the Byline Times and the Parliament Matters podcast.
On Monday, we got a partial answer to our question.
The May register shows an increase of 90 groups – up to 535.
We’ve crunched the numbers, and found that 86 of the 277 groups that were removed in April have been re-registered for the May edition. We can’t know for sure why this happened, but we know that Parliamentary authorities did an audit of compliance ahead of the April register, which might have contributed to lots of groups being removed. It’s possible that these groups have since passed the necessary requirements to be re-registered in time for the May edition.
Taking into account the last three registers, we found:
- 2 groups were deregistered in May (Thrombosis and UK Shared Prosperity Fund)
- 6 new groups were registered in May (Channel 4, Midlands Engine, Neurodiversity in Defence & National Security, Rare, Genetic and Undiagnosed Conditions, Slovenia and Tajikistan)
- 14 new groups were registered in April
- 86 groups were removed in April, but re-registered in May
- 205 groups were removed in April, but haven’t re-registered
- 429 groups were present in March, April and May
Dive into the data yourself
We’ve updated our public spreadsheet with the new register and an ‘All groups’ tab that shows which groups fall into the six categories above.
What next?
We’ve launched our WhoFundsThem project which is requesting information from all APPGs (yes, our job just got a bit bigger!).
We need your help – please consider volunteering, or donating £10 to help make this work happen.