How to monitor Parliament on a budget

If you want to monitor Parliament on a budget, start with what Parliament and government publish for free. It is all public, and a disciplined routine goes a long way.

The free route: a morning sweep

Most small policy teams begin with the same five places:

• GOV.UK for announcements, guidance and open consultations, with email alerts set for your department.
• Hansard for what was said in the Commons and the Lords, searchable by word or by member.
• The bills pages for each bill's stage, its amendments and the next sittings (see how to track a bill through Parliament).
• The committee pages for inquiries, evidence sessions and calls for evidence.
• Written questions and Early Day Motions, which show which MPs are raising your issue and who has signed what.

Set up the alerts each site offers, keep a short list of the bills and committees you follow, and do the sweep at the same time every day. It works, and thousands of people do it.

Where the free route runs out

The sweep has three costs that grow as your work does.

Time. An hour a day is five hours a week before you have done any of your real job, and the hour gets longer as your list of issues grows.

Misses. Free alerts match words, so they catch the debate with your topic in the title and miss the passing mention in a debate about something else. The mention that matters is often the one nobody flagged.

Interpretation. The official record tells you what happened. It cannot tell you which MPs are likely to back your amendment, how likely a bill is to pass, or what your team has already done with each MP.

When a tool earns its place

A monitoring tool is worth paying for when the sweep is costing you more than the subscription would, or when a miss would hurt your organisation more than the price.

Frontbench does the sweep overnight. Every bill, motion, committee session and consultation is matched to your organisation's priorities, and each morning your dashboard shows what moved. On top of the official record it gives estimated whip counts for MPs (how they are likely to vote), an estimated likelihood of each bill passing, amendment tracking, and a team and relationship tracker covering MPs and Peers.

Six tips for getting the most from a monitoring tool

1. Start with the policy area you cannot afford to miss. Choose the area where a surprise would hurt your organisation most, even if another area interests you more. A housing charity should start with housing, however often welfare touches its service users.

2. Make your priorities specific. "Housing" is a subject. "Section 21 no fault evictions" is a priority. The more specific you are, the better the matching can separate what matters to you from everything that merely mentions your topic.

3. Spend a keyword or two on names. Your minister, a committee chair, your own organisation. A name catches the passing mention in a debate about something else, which is exactly what a subject search misses.

4. Use Parliament's words. Bills and codes of practice have their own vocabulary, often different from the word you would use in conversation. If the bill says "qualifying tenancy", track "qualifying tenancy".

5. Check at the same time every day. Five minutes with your morning coffee replaces the hour-long sweep. A feed you check daily tells you a story; a feed you check fortnightly is just a backlog.

6. Test it on a real moment. Judge a tool when your bill reaches second reading or a reshuffle changes your minister, and see what it gives you under real conditions.

What Frontbench costs

Frontbench publishes its prices. Advocate is £50 a month billed annually, or £59 month to month. Coalition, with three seats for a team, is £152 a month billed annually, or £179 month to month. There is no free plan: every plan starts with a one-month free trial, so you can see whether Frontbench earns a place in your morning before you pay anything.

Book a short introduction and we will set up your profile and priorities with you and start your trial, or see how it works and full pricing.