Finding Parliamentary publications
This guide outlines ways of finding parliamentary papers, debates, and journals. For details of our collection see Parliamentary publications.
If you want to trace Bills, please see Finding legislation.
Papers
Papers were first printed in the seventeenth century but were not generally on sale until 1836. Prior to this time only a small proportion was separately printed. However many others can be found in the Journals of each House.
House of Commons papers. These include documents arising out of the deliberations of the House or required in connection with its work, and, also, the Command Papers, which are presented to Parliament by a Minister and are normally restricted to documents relating to matters likely to be the subject of early legislation or which may be regarded as otherwise essential to MPs as a whole to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.
House of Lords papers. Important social and political documents were included in the nineteenth century papers. Many were and are communicated to the Commons and can be found in that set.
For details of our printed holdings of papers see our Parliamentary publications page
Finding papers
- Search the UKOP database for references to papers from 1980 onwards
- Many papers, especially Committee Reports going back to Session 1997-98, are available on the internet either on the United Kingdom Parliament website or on a government department or organisation site - use Directgov for links
- The Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament publish papers on their websites:
- Northern Ireland Assembly
- National Assembly for Wales
- Scottish Parliament
- All papers from the UK Parliament, going back to November 2006, are in full-text on Public Information Online. This database is searchable and is updated daily. Northern Ireland Assembly (September 2008 -) and Scottish Parliament (May 2007 -) papers are also available.
- Full-text online papers from 1688 to 2004 can be searched on the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers site.
- Cumulative subject indexes covering 10, 50, or 100 years are located at 4th Floor Reference--328.424.
- Annual indexes are shelved with the print or microfiche sets of Parliamentary papers
- Individual print copies of papers held outside the Parliamentary papers set can be found either on the Unicorn catalogue or in the Online Card Catalogue. Entries in the latter catalogue are usually under the entry Great Britain, followed by House of Commons, House of Lords, or the relevant government department.
Debates
Both the Commons and Lords series (popularly known as Hansard) have been published verbatim since 1909; earlier Lords debates were published within the Commons volumes. Written answers, written ministerial statements and Westminster Hall debates are paged separately at the end of each Commons volume; written answers and statements, and Grand Committee debates are separately paged in the Lords volumes.
There are other private series of proceedings, diaries and debates held by this Library – for a full listing see House of Commons Library Document Series no.16 (4th Floor Reference—328.429-HOU) and search the Unicorn catalogue and the Online Card Catalogue for our details of our holdings and locations.
Finding debates
- An annual name and subject index is found in the last volume of each session for both the Commons and Lords.
- The United Kingdom Parliament website includes the debates from Session 1988-89 (Commons) and from Session 1995-96 (Lords).
- Hansard 1803-2005 offers an unofficial digitised version of the Commons and Lords debates back to 1803. If the official text is required, either in print or microfiche, this online service can be used to identify the date of the relevant volume of debates.
- Full-text debates before 1806 can be found online on the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers site
- The Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament include debates on their websites:
- Northern Ireland Assembly
- National Assembly for Wales
- Scottish Parliament
Journals
These volumes are the annual official and permanent record of the proceedings of each House, written in an explanatory and narrative style. They indicate what was done, rather than what was said, but earlier Journals contain some papers not found elsewhere.
Finding journals
- Print indexes are available for the Commons Journals up to 1980 and for the Lords Journals from 1660 to 1923. They are shelved with the volumes at Middle Folio--328.42. Commons Journals (1547-1987) are on the 4th Floor. Lords (1509-1854) are in the Basement Stack.
- The full-text of the Journals for both Houses from 1688-1834 and the accompanying indexes 1660-1837 (Commons) and 1660-1854 (Lords) are available online on the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers site.