Editing Hansard (section)

==United Kingdom==
{{quote|'''Mr. [[Michael Brotherton]] ([[Louth, Lincolnshire (UK Parliament constituency)|Louth]])''' On a [[point of order]], Mr. Speaker. Can you enlighten the House on how it will be possible to deal in future with the sort of trivia that has just wasted 22 minutes of the time of the House?<br>
'''Mr. [[George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy|Speaker]]''' Order. Nothing said in this House is ever trivial.|''Hansard'', 20 May 1981<ref name="hansard19810520">{{Cite web |date=1981-05-20 |title=Control of Space Invaders and Other Electronic Games |url=https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-05-20/debates/f983574e-4775-427c-a6de-7448e56f49ad/ControlOfSpaceInvadersAndOtherElectronicGames#contribution-3b5e8874-db31-4ef0-b91a-182dd27286f9 |access-date=2024-08-19 |website=Hansard}}</ref>}}


The ''Hansard'' of today, a comprehensive account of every speech, began in 1909 when [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] took over the publication and established its own staff of official ''Hansard'' reporters. At the same time, the decision was made to publish debates of the two houses in separate volumes, and to change the front cover from orange-red to light blue. A larger page format was introduced with new technology in 1980.

''Hansard'' is not a word-for-word transcript of debates in Parliament. Its terms of reference are those set by a House of Commons select committee in 1893, as being a report which, though not strictly verbatim, is substantially the verbatim report with repetitions and redundancies omitted and with obvious mistakes (including grammatical mistakes) corrected, but which, on the other hand, leaves out nothing that adds to the meaning of the speech or illustrates the argument.<ref name="Hansard terms of reference">Ian Church, "Official Report [Hansard] Centenary Volume", 2009, p. xvi.</ref>

One instance of such an eliminated redundancy involves the calling of MPs to speak in the House of Commons. In that house, the Speaker must call on an MP by name before that member may speak, but ''Hansard'' makes no mention of the recognition accorded by the Speaker. Also, ''Hansard'' sometimes adds extraneous material to make the remarks less ambiguous. For example, though members refer to each other as "the hon. Member for ''Constituency Name''{{-"}} rather than by name, ''Hansard'' adds, in parentheses, the name of the MP being referred to, the first time that MP is referred to in a speech or debate. When an MP simply points at another whose constituency he or she cannot remember, ''Hansard'' identifies him or her.

Any interruption to debate will be marked with the word "(Interruption)". This understated phrase covers a variety of situations, ranging from members laughing uproariously to the physical invasion of the chamber. Interjections from seated members, such as heckling during [[Prime minister's questions|Prime Minister's Questions]], are generally only included if the member who is speaking responds to the interjection.

''Hansard'' also publishes written answers – known as [[written ministerial statement]]s – made by government [[Minister (government)|ministers]] in response to questions formally posed by members. In 1839, Hansard, by order of the [[British House of Commons|House of Commons]], printed and published a report stating that an [[obscenity|indecent]] book published by a Mr. Stockdale was circulating in [[Newgate Prison]]. Stockdale sued for [[defamation]] but Hansard's defence, that the statement was true, succeeded. On publication of a reprint, Stockdale sued again but Hansard was ordered by the House to plead that he had acted under order of the Commons and was protected by [[parliamentary privilege]]. In the resulting case of ''[[Stockdale v Hansard]]'',<ref>(1839) 9 Ad & El 1</ref><ref>State Trials (New Series) III, 723.</ref> the court found that the house held no privilege to order publication of defamatory material. In consequence, Parliament passed the [[Parliamentary Papers Act 1840]] to establish privilege for publications under the house's authority.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Bradley, A.W.  |author2=Ewing, K.D. | year=2003 | title=Constitutional and Administrative Law | publisher=Pearson | location=London | edition=13th | pages=219–220 | isbn=0-582-43807-1}}</ref><ref>Stockdale, E. [1990] ''Public Law'' 30</ref><ref>{{cite book | author=Ford, P. & G. (eds) | title=Luke Graves Hansard's Diary 1814–1841 | year=1962 | location=Oxford | publisher=Blackwell}}</ref>

Since 1909, and for important votes before then, ''Hansard'' has listed how members have voted in [[Division (vote)|divisions]]. Furthermore, the proceedings and debates in committee are also published in separate volumes. For many years the House of Commons ''Hansard'' did not formally acknowledge the existence of parties in the House, except obliquely, with MPs' references to other MPs of the same party as "hon. Friends", but in 2003 this changed and members' party affiliations are now identified. The ''Hansard'' of the House of Lords operates entirely independently of its Commons counterpart, but with similar terms of reference. It covers parliamentary business in the House of Lords chamber itself, as well as the debates in the Moses Room, known as Grand Committee. Parliamentary written answers and statements are also printed. Emma Crewe notes that "Editors view reporters in general as a hive of revolution and anti-establishment attitudes, while they perceive themselves as calm and uncomplaining".<ref name="Crewe2005">{{cite book |last=Crewe |first=Emma |title=Lords of parliament: manners, rituals and politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VHpIwkpFOCkC&q=lords+of+parliament+hansard+revolutionary&pg=PA84 |access-date=4 January 2011 |year=2005 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-0-7190-7207-9 |page=84 |archive-date=16 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230316105308/https://books.google.com/books?id=VHpIwkpFOCkC&q=lords+of+parliament+hansard+revolutionary&pg=PA84 |url-status=live }}</ref> The Internet, with the help of volunteers, has made the UK ''Hansard'' more accessible. The UK ''Hansard'' is currently{{when|date=December 2019}} being digitised to a high-level format{{clarify|date=November 2014}} for on-line publication.{{citation needed|date=November 2016|reason=Some citation talking about these voluntary efforts, etc?}} It is possible to review and search the UK ''Hansard'' from 1803, with the exception of standing committees.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/|title=House of Commons Hansard archives|publisher=[[Parliament of the United Kingdom]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140518231458/http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/|archive-date=2014-05-18}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://hansard.parliament.uk/|title=Hansard Online - commencing May 2010|publisher=[[Parliament of the United Kingdom]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161113141245/https://hansard.parliament.uk/|archive-date=2016-11-13}}</ref>

Because ''Hansard'' is treated as accurate, there is a parliamentary convention whereby if a member of Parliament makes an inaccurate statement in Parliament, they must write a correction in the copy of ''Hansard'' kept in the House of Commons library.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}}

In 2010, historic copies of ''Hansard'' were sent to India in its original volume format and was transformed from the original bound versions into plain text by optical character recognition (OCR) and put on the Internet to enable easy research. In July 2018 this digitised ''Hansard'' was vastly improved and merged with the rest of ''Hansard'' as previously it was available under two websites and now it is a single website. There are still many 'typos' from the OCR process but readers are encouraged to report them when they are spotted.