Government documents and official publications

Search for Hansard material online

The UK Parliament’s Hansard website has the official reports of all Parliamentary debates. Find Members, their contributions, debates, petitions and divisions from published Hansard reports dating back over 200 years. Daily debates from Hansard are published on this website the next working day.

About Hansard

Hansard (also known as the Official Report) is the report of the proceedings of the British Parliament.

It is a full report, in the first person, of virtually every word said in the debates in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, with only repetitions and redundancies omitted and obvious mistakes corrected.

The debates are extremely useful for tracing the passage of a Bill through Parliament, and for establishing Parliament's feelings on political issues of the day.

Commons Hansard covers proceedings in the Commons Chamber and the sub-chamber Westminster Hall.

Lords Hansard covers proceedings in the Lords Chamber and its Grand Committees.

Both Commons and Lords Hansard contain the relevant written ministerial statements and written answers.

Public Bill Committee debates

These are reports of the debates of Public Bill Committees appointed by the Commons to consider Bills. Prior to session 2006/07 they were known as Standing Committees.

They are available on the Hansard website from 2016 onwards.

You can also browse the 1997–2016 archive of Public Bill Committee debates on the UK Parliament website.

The Library has printed reports of debates on Bills for 1951/52–2006/07. They are located in the Library store.

Search the Library for Hansard material

Complete sets of parliamentary debates for both Commons and Lords from 1803–2009 are in the Library store.

Earlier volumes are available in Special Collections in the Brotherton Library.

You can find 19th century parliamentary debates in sources other than Hansard. They are listed in A bibliography of parliamentary debates of Great Britain.

Search indexes

Use one of the following indexes to find debates on a particular subject or by a particular person:

• Commons Hansard: each bound volume has an index to its contents. At the conclusion of a session, a separate index volume for the entire session is produced
• Lords Hansard: each bound volume contains a cumulative index to that session. The sessional index is in the final volume of the session