Find your MP’s voting record

Why should I access my MPs' voting records? 

Your MP is elected to represent you in Parliament, having access to your MPs voting records helps you to understand if your views are being reflected by their decisions in the House of Commons.   

All votes in the House of Commons are publicly recorded and accessible to the public. This ensures that individual MPs and the government are transparent and can be held to account. This allows you and other constituents to make an informed choice on whether to vote for them in a future election or take other actions during a parliamentary term like creating petitions or taking part in legal protests.  

This is particularly important for LGBTQ+ people, as your MP will have been asked to vote on a number of specific issues that impact you and the wider LGBTQ+ community. In the past, MPs have been asked to vote on issues like equal marriage for same sex couples and  equalising the age of consent. 

Accessing your MPs voting records can help you to make informed decisions based on the facts. 

How do I access my MPs voting record? 

To find out how your MP voted on a specific issue, you need to know who your MP is.  If you don't already know this, you can find out via the UK Parliament website using your postcode.  More details on finding out who your MP is, and how to contact them, are available in our How to contact your MP fact sheet.   

In the UK, several resources online provide easy access to voting records; to enhance transparency and support a democratic society where informed voters hold representatives accountable.  These websites operate slightly differently but will all tell you how your MP voted on certain issues.   

The main websites to use are: 

The Public Whip 

They Work for You (My Society) 

UK Parliament website 

Which vote are you looking for? 

To identify how your MP voted on a specific issue, you also need to know the relevant bill or act that was voted on in the House of Commons. 

In Parliament, proposed changes to laws (known collectively as legislation) are bundled into packages called Bills. Bills are proposed legislation that hasn’t been signed into law and enacted. When this happens and a vote succeeds, the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament.  

Bills usually contain multiple changes to the law and are given names that represent the Bill’s contents as accurately as possible. For instance, the changes to electoral law and voting rights that introduced photo Voter ID in the UK were contained within a Bill, which became an Act when it was passed, called “The Elections Act (2022)”. 

In some cases, finding the relevant vote on a relevant bill is simple, thanks to these naming conventions. If you’re unsure which bill is the one you’re looking for, then you can find useful summaries of parliamentary Bills using the “Find a Bill” feature on the UK Parliament’s website.  These summaries are easy to read and provide a quick overview of a bill’s contents and objectives. 

Making things simple 

You might find it helpful to visit different websites to see how they each present your MPs voting records.   

They Work for You is a site which summarises how MPs voted on certain topics.  The information is written in clear, accessible language so that most people can understand exactly what it means.   

MySociety also allows you to see a general breakdown of how your MP voted on a number of issues, including those that directly relate to the LGBTQ+ community (such as voting on equal marriage).  Having access to how your MP voted on a wide range of issues generally can help you to see if their voting stance towards LGBTQ+ issues intersects with any other concerns, issues, or interests you have.  For example, your MP might vote to expand some LGBTQ+ rights, but against an issue that is important to you.   

You can see how your MP voted on ‘gay rights’ issues here: 

https://www.mysociety.org/wehelpyou/how-your-mp-voted-on-gay-rights-issues/ 

The UK Parliament website shows the most recent votes that have happened in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons.  To search this website, you will usually need the ‘title’ or ‘division number’ relating to the vote which you may be able to find using the websites above.   

In UK Parliament, ‘division’ means vote, which will be given a number for record-keeping purposes.   'Title’ is the name, or topic, of the vote, which tells the people voting what exactly they are voting on.  You need more information to access voting records this way, so you might find it easier to access records on specific topics or issues using one of the other websites, where you only need to know your postcode to see your MPs voting records and the UK Parliament website for further detail. 

Supported by the Greater London Authority, City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, London E16 1ZE. Printed and promoted by LGBT HERO, Unit 74, The Link, 49 Effra Road, London SW2 1BZ