Privacy notice
Where They Stand uses no cookies, no advertising and no tracking, and needs no account. This notice explains the little it does store, and why.
Last updated 10 October 2026.
Who is responsible
Where They Stand is run by Rob Mitchell, who is the data controller for the personal information described here. Contact: admin@wheretheystand.uk.
What is stored, and why
- Your questions and the briefings written for them
- Each briefing is saved with its question so that it can be shared at its own address, so that the same question can be answered again without paying for a new briefing, and so that complaints about a briefing can be checked against exactly what was shown. Saved briefings are not listed anywhere and are not linked to you. Please do not put personal details in a question.
- A daily visitor code, not your IP address
- To apply the daily limit on new briefings, prevent abuse and count visitors, your IP address is turned into a scrambled code. The secret used to make the code changes every day and the old one is deleted, so a code cannot be linked to the next day's or turned back into an address. Your IP address itself is not stored.
- Visit counts
- Pages viewed and the website that linked to the page are counted per day. Only daily totals are kept.
- Feedback and reports
- If you answer "Was this briefing useful?", the answer is saved with the question. If you report a problem, your message is saved, with your email address if you choose to give one. The email address is used only to reply to you and is deleted when the report is dealt with. A short public note may be added to the corrections page; it never includes your name or email address.
- Settings on your device
- Your choices in Settings (such as briefing length) are kept in your own browser, not sent to us. You can clear them by clearing this site's data in your browser.
Information about members of Parliament
Briefings describe MPs and peers using public information about their parliamentary role: party, constituency, offices held, and, when a question asks about it, gender as recorded by Parliament and age on the date they spoke, calculated from the date of birth published on Wikidata. This is processed in the public interest of reporting on Parliament. A member who believes their information is wrong can ask for it to be corrected, using the contact details above.
Who else is involved
- Anthropic writes the briefings. Your question and the Hansard records found for it are sent to Anthropic's API to write each briefing. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, this is not used to train its models. See Anthropic's privacy policy.
- The hosting provider runs the server, in the UK, and has no access to the site's data beyond keeping it running.
- Donations, if you make one, are handled by the donations platform under its own privacy policy. Where They Stand receives your name and any message you choose to leave, but never your card details.
Nothing is sold or shared for marketing. The site loads no third-party scripts, fonts or trackers.
Legal basis and how long it is kept
Information is processed on the basis of legitimate interests: running a free public service, keeping its costs within budget, preventing abuse, and correcting errors. Saved briefings are kept while the site runs, unless withdrawn. Visitor codes cannot be traced to anyone after the day they are made. Report contact details are deleted when the report is closed. Server error logs are kept briefly, and requests are not logged.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of information held about you, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted, or object to its use. Because the site does not know who you are, it may need your help to find it, such as the address of a briefing or the date you sent a report. Email admin@wheretheystand.uk.
If you are unhappy with the answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.