Who Writes Down Everything Parliament Says? A Family Business, at First

The publication is a substantially verbatim report of what is said in each chamber, produced for every sitting day and published rapidly, currently within hours. The standard adopted is not a literal transcript, since it removes repetitions and obvious errors while preserving the sense and the argument entirely, which makes it readable without making it a summary. It covers debates in the chamber and in committees, and records divisions, meaning how each member voted. Equivalent publications exist in most parliaments descended from the Westminster model, several of which use the same name.

The origin is commercial and slightly disreputable:

• •Reporting debates was a breach of privilege and was prosecuted
• •Newspapers reported them anyway, from memory and from smuggled notes
• •A printer named Luke Hansard's firm took over publication in 1812
• •The name attached to the publication and never left it
• •Early reports were compiled from newspapers rather than taken directly
• •Parliament took the work over and funded it properly from 1909

Parliament treated the reporting of its proceedings as a punishable offence for most of the eighteenth century, on the reasoning that members must be free to speak without answering to anybody outside the chamber. Printers who published debates were summoned, imprisoned and fined. The conflict came to a head in 1771 when the Commons attempted to arrest several printers and the City of London authorities refused to cooperate, arresting the parliamentary messenger instead, which produced a standoff that parliament effectively lost. Reporting continued unchallenged afterwards, although the prohibition was not formally removed for another century. The episode is generally treated as a foundation of press freedom in Britain.

Turning continuous speech into publishable text within hours is a substantial operation with an unusual working method. Reporters work in short rotations of a few minutes each in the chamber, since sustained verbatim capture is exhausting and accuracy falls off quickly, and each takes their own turn away to produce the text while a colleague covers the next. Shorthand was the traditional method and audio recording now supports it. Members may correct obvious errors in their own words but may not alter what they said, which is the boundary that protects the record. Interventions, interruptions and the noises of the chamber are recorded in a set of conventional descriptions rather than transcribed.

For most of its existence judges refused to look at the record when interpreting a statute, on the principle that the law is what parliament enacted rather than what anybody said about it, and that ministers' explanations are not law. The House of Lords changed that in 1993 in a decision that permits courts to consult it where the words of a statute are ambiguous or lead to absurdity, and where a minister made a clear statement about what the provision meant. The change is controversial, with critics arguing that it adds cost, encourages ministers to make statements aimed at future litigation, and treats an unexamined remark as though it carried the authority of the whole legislature.

A substantially verbatim report of parliamentary debate, tidied of repetition and preserving the argument, began as a private printing business and carries that printer's name. Parliament prosecuted reporters until losing a confrontation with the City of London in 1771. Since a 1993 decision, courts may consult the record to resolve an ambiguous statute where a minister stated clearly what a provision meant.