Introduction | Creating a topic alert | Creating a representative alert | Managing your alerts | Common questions
Why keep checking what’s being said in Parliament, when it can drop straight into your inbox?
If you have an interest in what your MP or other representatives are saying in the UK Parliaments, or you like to keep track of a certain topic, check out TheyWorkForYou’s email alerts. This free service sends you an email each time your chosen words are mentioned or representative has spoken.
Who uses alerts?
Alerts are super-useful for campaigns, charities, and organisations large and small — as well as any individual who wants to keep up with Parliament’s goings-on. They can be broad, covering every Parliament (including the Senedd, Scottish and Northern Ireland parliaments) and every type of debate; or they can be fine tuned to your needs.
On this page, we explain how to set an alert up, and how to make sure it’s doing exactly what you want it to.
Creating a topic alert
First, decide what word or topic you would like to track.
What are you interested in?
Perhaps you work for a charity, and would like to know every time your cause is mentioned; or maybe you’re just generally interested in something. Either way, let’s say you’d like to know how woodlands are being talked about and voted on in Parliament.
Add your word or phrase
On TheyWorkForYou’s alerts page, click the green button marked ‘create new keyword alert’, and you’ll be invited to enter your email address, then add the word or phrase you would like to track.
Optionally, add variants
Perhaps you would like to track more than one word: you can add any number of words or phrases here, by clicking the green button marked ‘add another phrase’. So, in our example, you might add forests, and perhaps wider interests such as biodiversity, or urban trees.
Using quotation marks to keeps words together
Note that, for any phrases with more than one word, putting them in quotation marks (like this: “urban trees“) will ensure you only receive alerts where the words appear together.
In this example, urban trees is not in quotation marks, so results will include speeches where the word ‘urban’ and the word ‘trees’ may be separate, like this:
Only see debates where all of your chosen words appear
If you only want to know about debates where all of your chosen topics are mentioned, tick the box marked “Require all phrases to be present (AND rather than OR)”.
This can be especially useful where your alerts are commonly-used words that might appear in other contexts – for example, ‘tree‘ will bring many results; but tree AND protection should refine the results a bit further.
On the other hand, if you are interested in seeing debates where any of your keywords are mentioned, leave this box unticked.
Exclude specific words or phrases
You can improve your alerts even more, by ruling out words and phrases that will make the debate of no interest to you. For example you might want to hear about trees but not decision trees or Christmas trees. In these cases, add those phrases to the box marked “Are there any phrases you would not like to receive alerts about?”.
All parliaments and chambers, or just one?
You can keep your alert so that it monitors right across every Parliament and chamber; or narrow it down to one, eg you might only want to know about mentions in Scottish Parliament.
Everyone, or a specific representative?
Finally, you may choose to only follow mentions of your chosen topic/s from a particular MP or representative.
Keep refining
It’s often a matter of trial and error what works best for your needs – but if you register for a free account, you can come back and tweak your alerts as many times as you need to until you are getting the most useful results.
You can make as many alerts as you like
If you have multiple, unconnected interests, you can go through this process several times, to create a well-refined alert for each.
Creating a representative alert
Perhaps, rather than topics, you’re more interested in following your own MP or other representatives, so you know what they’re saying and how they are voting.
For this, go to the alerts page and click the green button marked ‘create new Representative alert’.
Subscribe to your own MP’s speeches/votes
If you’d like to follow your own MP, the easiest way is to input your postcode, and we’ll show you who represents you:
Click the green button and you’re done!
If you have more than one representative
If you live in an area where you have more than one representative, like Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London, for example, when you put in your postcode you’ll see a list of options. You can subscribe to just one, or more of them.
Or, search by name – or even part of a name.
For example if you know the first name is Antonia but you can’t remember the surname, you can search and you’ll be shown any name containing that. Just pick the one you want.
Debates and votes, or just debates?
If you’re not interested in votes, just check the box marked ‘Do not include votes in the alert’.
Managing your alerts
If you create an account on TheyWorkForYou, you’ll be able to log in and edit, delete or pause any of your alerts. So, if they’re not quite behaving as you expected, you can change the set-up. If you’re going on holiday, you can pause them. And if you’re just not interested any more, you can delete them!
You can also change your email address.
Here’s where to create your account.
Already set some alerts up before registering? No worries: so long as you use the same email address as your alerts go to, the system will recognise that you are the same person.
Common questions
Do I need to set up an account to receive alerts?
No! You only need to put in your email address to start receiving them. But you’ll need an account if you want to edit, pause or delete them. Having an account also means you don’t have to verify your identity every time you want to set up a new alert.
Why aren’t I receiving any alerts?
The most common reasons are:
Your chosen topic hasn’t been mentioned recently You can check when it last came up in Parliament, either by searching the site, or, if you’ve set up an account, by visiting the alerts page and clicking the + sign next to your chosen word or phrase.
Parliament is on recess We don’t send out any alerts when there aren’t any debates or votes! You can check what’s happening on any given date on TheyWorkForYou’s calendar page.
How can I change my email address?
Visit your profile page, and edit the email address field.
If you don’t have a TheyWorkForYou account yet, you’ll need to register first. Use your old email address, so that the account you create will contain your existing alerts. We’ll send you a confirmation email to that address, and once you’ve clicked the link in that, you’ll be able to visit your profile page and edit the email address field as described above to add your new address.
If you no longer have access to your old email address and wouldn’t be able to complete the account confirmation step, get in touch and we can change it for you.
I’m trying to sign up for an email alert but the confirmation mail has not arrived
Please check your spam or junk folder. If you still can’t find the email, let us know and we’ll confirm you at our end.
My postcode isn’t recognised by your site
If your postcode is brand new, it’s possible that we don’t yet have the data to recognise it. The site will update in due course when we upload new data from Ordnance Survey. We’d suggest using a nearby postcode that you know to be in the same constituency.
Otherwise, please drop us a line and tell us the postcode you’re trying to input.
My postcode returns the wrong MP
Our postcode-to-constituency mapping is handled by MapIt, a piece of software which takes the centre point of a postcode and returns the constituency that point is in. In rare cases where postcodes straddle boundaries, this method delivers the wrong results for a handful of people.
We suggest that you use a neighbouring postcode in order to bring up the right representatives.
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Image: Vitaly Gariev