Guidance

How to publish ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings

Template for GOV.UK publication page for departmental core transparency data, to be published quarterly.

Prepare the data

The Cabinet Office Transparency Data team has provided this guidance on how to preparecollect and interpret your data.data for publication.

Ministers Transparency Guidance (PDF, 251193 KB, 2021 pages)

They will commission you with - CSV (comma-separated values) templates, timing and support on appropriate approval processes.

This guidance will apply to transparency data for the period of January - March 2024 onwards, to be published in due course.onwards.

Government is committed to publishing this data quarterly.every quarter.

Publish the data

Create a new GOV.UK publication page for each data release.

Create a collection page on GOV.UK for all data releases, with links to each individual publication page.

Consider creating a www.data.gov.uk collection page for each individual data set

Publication page template

The publication title, summary, detail and file name is a government standard and must not be changed.

Publication type: Transparency data

Title: [Department name or acronym]: ministerial gifts, hospitality, overseas travel and meetings, [month to month] [year]
Example Title: “Cabinet Office: ministerial gifts, hospitality, overseas travel and meetings, April to June 2024”

Summary: Data on gifts that ministers gave and received, theirall externalhospitality meetingsreceived, and any overseas travel.travel, and meetings with external individuals and organisations.

Body:

[Department] publishes details of ministers’ meetings with external organisations, gifts (given and received), hospitality andreceived, all overseas traveltravel, onand ameetings quarterlywith basis.

Thisexternal dataindividuals isand alsoorganisations availableevery on data.gov.uk:quarter.

  • [add bulleted links to the data.gov.uk pages this data also appears on]

Associations

Policies: Government transparency and accountability

Policy areas: Government efficiency, transparency and accountability

CSV attachment titles:

titles

  • [Department]’s ministerial gifts, [month to month] [year]
  • [Department]’s ministerial hospitality, [month to month] [year]
  • [Department]’s ministerial overseas travel, [month to month] [year]
  • [Department]’s ministerial meetings [month to month] [year]

Add

For aexample:

  1. Cabinet linkOffice onministerial data.gov.uk

Whengifts theJanuary datasetto isMarch published,2025

  • Cabinet addOffice aministerial linkhospitality January to itMarch in2025
  • Cabinet yourOffice department’sministerial sectionoverseas ontravel data.gov.uk.

    January to March 2025
  • Cabinet Office ministerial  meetings January to March 2025
  • Collection page [GOV.UK]

    Add the new publication to your department’s collection page for this data.

    Make sure the collection page is tagged to the Government transparency and accountability policy.

    Collection page template [GOV.UK]

    Title: [Department]: ministerial gifts, hospitality, traveloverseas travel, and meetings

    Summary: All data on gifts that [department] ministers gave and received, theirall externalhospitality meetingsreceived, and any overseas travel.travel and meetings with external individuals and organisations.

    Body (optional):

    Government publishes details of ministers’ meetings with external organisations, gifts (given and received), hospitality andreceived, all overseas traveltravel, onand ameetings quarterlywith basis.external individuals and organisations every quarter.

    Subheadings: Add headings for each calendar year, most recent first.

    DATA.GOV.UK page templates

    IfWhen therethe aredataset nois reportspublished, add a link to it in your department’s section on data.gov.uk.

    We recommend that this is maintained as a series of collection pages listing all historic publications on GOV.UK with a direct link to the .CSV resource.
    An individual page will need to be maintained for each of the following:

    1. Gifts,
    2. Hospitality,
    3. Overseas Travel, and
    4. Meetings

    Title: [Department]: Ministerial [the specific data set] data
    Example:

    1. Cabinet Office Ministerial Gifts Data
    2. Cabinet Office Ministerial Hospitality Data
    3. Cabinet Office Ministerial Overseas Travel Data
    4. Cabinet Office Ministerial Meetings Data

    Summary: This is a quarter,collection addand ‘Nothingcollation waspage reportedfor inan [monthelement of [your department] Ministerial Transparency publications [published here: {your ministerial transparency pages on gov.uk}.]

    Guidance - Each CSV published on GOV.UK will be listed here, to month]enable [year].’easy underaccess to a single stream of data on Ministers. Please use the heading.naming conventions present on www.gov.uk to ensure data is accurately described and dated to specific period and year.

    Historical Data

    Where possible - review historical datasets on www.gov.uk and convert these to CSV format for ease of use within both www.gov.uk and for referencing within www.data.gov.uk.
    Do not ever archive or remove historical publications from www.gov.uk

    Published 14 December 2017
    Last updated 142 DecemberApril 20232024 + show all updates
    1. Updated with the latest guidance.

    2. Added the document: Ministers Transparency Guidance

    3. First published.