Editions of the Official Report
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The edition of the Official Report that appears each morning carrying the previous days proceedings in the Chamber and Westminster Hall is available in the Vote Office and on the internet at
9 am. It carries what was said in the House up to at least 1 am.
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Each Monday, the weekly edition, in a soft green cover, is available in the Vote Office
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The bound volume, which is the definitive version and produced in a green hardback cover, appears in the Vote Office about three months after the date of the proceedings it contains.
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The equivalent of the daily Hansard for Standing Committees is normally printed overnight or in time for the next sitting
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When spare printing capacity is available – usually during the summer recess – the proceedings of each Committee are collated and bound in a soft brown cover
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Much later, the bound volumes of the reports are produced in hardback form
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The Official Report is published by TSO (The Stationery Office) in daily and weekly parts and in fortnightly green bound volumes. An index is prepared for each volume, which is also sold separately,. The bound volumes are the archive set and incorporate corrections from the daily part (no corrections are made in the weekly edition). A cumulative index to the whole Session is published as the last bound volume of each Session. Occasionally, if exceptionally long sittings or large numbers of written answers have occurred, a daily part has to be split and a part I or part II issued.
Standing Committee Hansard is sold in daily parts (which may be composed of three or four parts if the Committee debate has been very long). The Committee debates on a Bill are issued together in what is called the “brown cover” and are subsequently published in bound volumes.
The Official Report is currently available on the parliamentary website, www.parliament.uk, from 8 am on the day following the sitting. Same-day access to speeches in the Chamber and Westminster Hall is also available on a rolling basis on the internet. The production target is to have a Member's speech available within three to four hours. Proceedings are available from October 1988 for Commons debates, and Standing Committee debates are available since November 1997. The bound volume is also available on CD-Rom.
There are three sets of column numbering: in roman type for the Chamber; with the suffix WH for Westminster Hall; and with the suffix W for written answers. These latter always come in a separate sequence at the end of the daily part or bound volume. The computer typesetting method used may mean that shunting up of columns occurs and this causes variation between the daily/weekly part and the bound volume.
The Official Report is sold to the public by TSO. Most large public libraries stock Hansard and the House of Commons Information Office can advise in which libraries in Britain and Ireland it can be consulted.
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