Is this the biggest UK government ever?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/oct/12/size-government-uk Version 0 of 1. How many people does it take to govern Britain? It could be more than ever before, at a time of cuts across Whitehall. New figures from the House of Commons, plus some research by Democratic Audit shows that the government now is the biggest it has been since 1900 under the Conservative Marquess of Salisbury. The latest ministerial rollcall is double the 60 MPs and peers in 1900. There are currently 121 MPs and peers who are cabinet secretaries, ministers or in the whips office, three more than when the coalition was formed in 2010, following a gradual rise from 105 in 1979. Then there are the Parliamentary Private Secretary unpaid assistant jobs seen as a lift up the greasy parliamentary pole. PPSs have risen from 40 in 1983, the first year for which figures are given, to a peak of 58 under Labour PM Tony Blair in 2001, and 46 after the general election. Press reports suggest the current figure is 43-46. <strong></strong> If you look at the figures just as a proportion of members of the House of Commons, there looks to have been a slight dip - but that's because there are slightly more Lords in government in 2012 than in 2010. <strong></strong> The full data is below for you to download - what can you do with it? Data summary Size of the UK government Click heading to sort table. Download this data SOURCES: Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher (2009) 'British Electoral Facts', London: Total Politics (p.127); Keith Parry and Richard Kelly (2012) 'Limitations on the number of Ministers and the size of the payroll vote', Standard Note SN/PC/03378, London: House of Commons Library (p. 6) <strong> </strong> Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet NEW! Buy our book • Facts are Sacred: the power of data (on Kindle) More open data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data <input type="text" name="q" value=""/> <input type="submit" value="Search for data"/> <strong></strong> • Search the world's government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • <strong>Flickr</strong> Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group<br />• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk <strong>• Get the A-Z of data<br />• More at the Datastore directory</strong><br /><strong>• Follow us on Twitter<br />• Like us on Facebook</strong> |