Hansard

 Hansard is the official record of what is said in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. I willl be talking about how to access the site & what you can find there on this week's edition of PPS on Spectrum on Air

You can access Hansard at https://hansard.parliament.uk

Old Hansards

Hansard is the record of what is said in Parliament. There are separate editions for the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Editions since 2010 can be searched for at https://hansard.parliament.uk.

The House of Commons Hansard can be searched for by date from November 1988 to March 2016 via http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/by-date/ and the Lords via http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/lords/

If you want to go back further (and I've enjoyed some interesting reading through this site) then visit http://hansard.millbanksystems.com. This covers the period 1803 to 2005.

Following the House of Commons (particularly Oral Questions)

The Commons Business App can be found in the AppStore as "Commons Order Papers" - you can download for each sitting day the business papers for the day ahead. The one for next Monday is available now (we are currently in a recess - normally the papers are only available after the previous day's business has finished.

Part I is 'Business Today' - click on ''Business Today: Chamber" - that has all the oral questions set down for that day. Not all will be asked, when time runs out, remaining questions get only a written answer.

Part II is 'Future Business'

The Parliamentary website is www.parliament.uk

Follow the following tabs -

- Parliamentary business

  - Publications & Records

    - House of Commons business papers

      - Question Book (from this page you can download the PDF of dates and deadlines - direct link http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-table-office/Oral-questions-rota.pdf)

        - Questions for oral answer on a future day

(This comes out every day and lists questions up to the third parliamentary day from the date of issue.

Hansard is also available on the parliamentary website

- Parliamentary business

  - Publications & records

    - View & search Commons & Lords Hansards - direct link https://hansard.parliament.uk

When Technology Raises Constitutional Issues

I have been attending the first two sessions of the Public Bill Committee on the Education and Adoption Bill. The afternoon hearing shuddered to a sudden halt, when it was realised that the witnesses' microphones weren't working. We had to wait until the correct button was hit before the 20 person committee and the 3 witnesses could start.

It was explained that without the microphones, there was nothing for Hansard to use in preparing a transcript. Without that record, legally the evidence did not exist - hence the delay. A number of suggestions were made about getting the witnesses to be heard, but that was not the issue.

Watching the House of Commons

Yesterday I enjoyed the, sadly all too rare, opportunity of sitting in the public gallery of the Commons to watch a debate. The Education and Adoption Bill was having its Second Reading - and I could watch the Frontbench speeches followed by a succession of speeches from backbenchers - including a number of maiden speeches. It is good occasionally to watch a debate in the chamber - without the usual distractions. Normally when "watching a debate", I am multi-tasking - part listening to the debate; part reading something else - or writing; or carrying out some other task (downloading some material from the internet and so on). In the gallery one's full attention can be focussed on what is being said - and what is going on in the chamber. It's also good to be able to follow a debate over a number of hours! (Reading Hansard isn't quite the same)

I think that it is wonderful that we can now watch the live, un-interrupted  feed from the Chamber. In the past - and when I first visited the House of Commons in 1975 - that wasn't possible - only the written report or a summary on the news was possible. Now with the internet it is possible to watch the television coverage on BBC Parliament or a live stream on Parliamentlive.tv. Podcasts are available of Today in Parliament. But the limitations of TV cameras only give you part of the picture - and there is much of interest to observe outside the zone covered. The interactions and reactions off screen are important too.

Pepper v Hart

I mentioned the case of Pepper v Hart in yesterday's post. It was quite a breakthrough - prior to the decision, it was not possible to argue using Hansard, what the "intention of Parliament" was. While there were good reasons for the original rule, it did seem strange that the one document which recorded the reasons for introducing a bill and the aims of the proposed legislation couldn't be used.

The speech of the Minister or member who brought forward the bill during Second Reading usually sets out the "mischief" which the proposed legislation sets out to address. MPs and Peers will use the legislative process to get explanations about the intended effect of specific words and phrases. Ministers may seek to assure the House about the meaning (and what is NOT intended).

The House of Commons Library produced a paper on the decision - and what we may now call "The rule in Pepper v Hart". The paper states -

"Following the decision in Pepper v Hart in 1993, if primary legislation is ambiguous or obscure the courts may in certain circumstances take account of statements made in Parliament by Ministers or other promoters of a Bill in construing that legislation. Until that decision, using Hansard in that way would have been regarded as a breach of Parliamentary privilege.”

The paper is available here.
 


  

Writing Constitutions

Having just finished marking the first eTMA on the Open University’s W201 course, I’ve read the phrase “unwritten constitution” many, many times in the last few days. It’s one of the key characheristics of the UK Constitution – but the term only appears in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The first occurrence in Hansard (the almost verbatim report of what was said in Parliament) is in the 1850s, and it is rare until the 1870s. It was then that the idea of an unwritten constitution became popular (Bagehot has a lot to answer for!)


This was one of the nuggets contained in the lecture “Liberties and Empires: Writing Constitutions in the Atlantic World 1776-1848” given by Professor Linda Colley. She highlighted how popular writing constitutions had become after the Americans and French had excited peoples’ interest. London, a popular destination for political exiles from around the world, saw an incredible exchange of ideas.

Professor Colley is currently writing a book on the subject. She’s a historian – but her lecture was full of interest for those with an interest in Constitutions – and as I come to the subject as an academic in both the legal and political science fields, I found it fascinating. She described the work of people like John Cartwright and Jeremy Bentham, and traced the interest in the Magna Carta. There was an explosion in constitution writing as the idea spread that Government could be “simple, accountable and broadly based”. Perhaps it’s time for us in Britain to return to those interests of the late 18th and early 19th Century?

The Daily Digest

If you thought that reading Hansard took a long time - try the Congressional Record. Not only does it record what was actually said - but Members can have "Extensions of Remarks" inserted - allowing them to put on record reports, letters, books - in fact anything they want.

However help is at hand if you want a summary of what was done on a particular day - and what is coming up. Each sitting day (and remember that the House of Representatives and the Senate do not necessarily sit on the same days) the Daily Digest is produced. It can be read in PDF format (which I find very useful).

The Digest sets out, for each chamber, a summary of "Chamber Action" and "Committee Meetings" - references to the page numbers in the Congressional Record are given. When available, details of "Next Meetings" are given.

Online access to (sometimes ancient) Hansard

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (a greatly respected historian) put done the following written question which was answered last week -

To ask the Chairman of Committees "what assessment he has made of the possibility of providing greater electronic access for the public to historic Hansard data on Millbank Systems' experimental web domain; what plans have been made to host the information on the parliamentary website; and what steps are being taken to digitise data that are not currently available on the experimental website." [HL13352]

The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): "The Historic Hansard web pages and search engine are hosted on Millbank Systems' web domain on behalf of Parliament and are available to all users of the web. The service is supported on a "best endeavours" basis. PICT and staff from the departments of Information Services of both Houses are currently investigating the options for maintaining and enhancing the current service, and for placing the technical support arrangements on a more sustainable footing. Work is also under way to safeguard the Historic Hansard XML data and page images through the digital preservation project, which is led by the Parliamentary Archives. One of the options under consideration for Historic Hansard would involve integrating the historic web pages with the archive of more recent Hansard material on the website and enabling users to browse and search across the full Hansard record in a more seamless fashion. The timescales, benefits and costs of that approach are being assessed. This project, along with others, has been included in a digitisation programme, which will review requests to digitise parliamentary material currently only available in hard copy. Digitised content from these projects will be added to the main parliamentary website or through partnership websites so that it is easier for users to access the material. More information about the various projects included in this programme of work will be published on the intranet in due course."

I should like to commend and recommend the website - I have used it extensively for my own research (particularly for my current work on whips - and for the paper I wrote for the last Wroxton Conference
(9^th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars & Parliamentarians) "The First Labour Group in the House of Lords, 1924").

It can be accessed at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/