Over 200 years of records of Parliamentary debates brought to life by new website
6 July 2018
The UK Parliament is today launching a unique website encompassing the archive of Hansard – the Official Report of parliamentary debates – stretching back to 1803.
The website will be a milestone in the ongoing project to integrate historical reports with the reports of parliamentary debates produced on a daily basis by the teams of Hansard writers and editors.
The launch of the site comes in a year that sees the anniversary of many key parliamentary events, including the 90th anniversary of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act and the centenary of votes for women. The debates that led to these momentous occasions and many others will now be easily accessible to everyone, as they will form part of the main Hansard site for anyone who wishes to read the record of proceedings in Parliament.
The archive is huge – about five billion words, which were contained in more than 3000 volumes. That would take someone speaking at fast speed, 150 words per minute, and without sleeping, 57 years to read out.
Future developments will include the integration of video with Hansard, so users can easily switch between the two mediums.
The project is over ten years in the making, and began with the scanning of old bound volumes. The site where this content was initially hosted was a pilot project and is being replaced by new pages that offer in one place the ability to search Hansard content over more than two centuries.
Alex Newton, Editor of Commons Hansard and John Vice, Editor of Debates (House of Lords) commented: “I am delighted that everyone can now access more than 3,000 Hansard volumes in one site.
"There are more than 5 billion words in this archive, and some amazing speeches, such as Lord Byron's support for the Luddites, the clashes between Gladstone and Disraeli throughout the late 19th century, Churchill's rallying call to the nation in 1940 that “we shall never surrender”, the creation of the NHS and the welfare state, and the extension of the vote to women.
"Building this site has been a great piece of collaboration between the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Parliamentary Digital Service, and I am thrilled that it is being launched today.”