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Editor
Lorraine Sutherland
The Editor has overall responsibility for the overnight production of the Official Report (Hansard). She is assisted by the Deputy Editor (Debates), the Deputy Editor (Committees) and eight Managing Editors. She has a total staff of just over 100.
She is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Commonwealth Hansard Editors Association and a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Reporting Association.
In addition to her editorial/management duties, she is the sponsor of departmental projects - for example, bringing pagination in-house - and the sponsor of reviews by Internal Review Services, most recently on Data Protection Compliance. She meets visitors from other Parliaments and organisations and explains the workings of the Westminster Hansard to them. She is a member of the following bodies: Board of Management of the House of Commons; Whitley Committee of the House of Commons; Diversity Forum; PICT Forum; and the Printing and Publishing Management Group.
Deputy Editor (Debates)
Vivian Widgery
The post holder is responsible for the debates section of Hansard and for the report of sittings in Westminster Hall. She is also the Financial Resources Manager, with responsibility for all aspects of departmental expenditure, from the three-year PES planning exercise to monitoring monthly management accounts to ensure that the department is spending within its budgets and getting value for money for the House of Commons.
The debates section reports proceedings in the Chamber of the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall. It processes written questions and answers for the department’s written answers unit.
The section sends copy to the printers throughout the day, on a rolling deadline of three hours, which reduces to one and a half hours after the rise of the House. The reports are published on a "rolling" website, which is updated throughout the day, as well as appearing both in print and on online the next morning. Proceedings up to about 1 am are available to Members of Parliament by 7.30 am in print and at 8 am online.
Reporters use various methods to capture the spoken word, including pen shorthand, machine shorthand, computer-aided transcription and tape recording. All these methods converge in the electronic transfer of reports from reporters to sub-editors, who check for accuracy of style and procedure, make any final amendments, concatenate the reports into sections of copy and send them to the printers, again electronically.
The Deputy Editor (Debates) and her staff are involved in many other activities in the House. There are representatives on the Group for Information for the Public, the Freedom of Information Working Group, the Braithwaite Implementation Team, the Reception for New Members Group and the Parliamentary Website Redesign Group.
The Managing Editors manage the House reporters, the Westminster Hall reporters, the annunciators, the word processing assistants, the production unit and the written answers unit.
The reports of the Chamber and Westminster Hall debates are printed overnight.
Reporters send their completed copy to the MEs, who check it for consistency, accuracy, style and procedure and give it the final “polish”. The copy is then compiled into sections ready for sending via dial-up modems to the printer, The Stationery Office Parliamentary Data Centre.
The MEs also deal with the hundreds of written questions and answers that appear in Hansard each week. These are keyed in by the written answers unit operators and sent via electronic links to The Stationery Office.
The Managing Editors' room is where Members can check the transcript of their speeches. Members are not allowed to make alterations of substance to their speeches. Neither may Members subsequently add anything to their speeches or “write in” material to the record, as is allowed in some other legislatures.
Finished speeches are sent to the printers three hours after Members have sat down and are then published on the "rolling" internet site. Once speeches have been sent to the printers, it is not possible to amend them – any approved corrections are made to the bound volume.
Annunciator System
Our team of annunciator staff perform an operation that is crucial to the smooth running of Parliament, Whitehall and the Government machine. Without the information they put out on screens throughout the Palace of Westminster and beyond, Members and Ministers could never be sure of when their attendance in the Chamber or Westminster Hall was required, or of what was being debated at any given moment. Thus, although the staff are for the most part invisible, their work is vital to several thousand busy people – a fact attested to by the instant jamming of the switchboard on the rare occasions when something goes wrong with the system.
Deploying their knowledge of Members and the House’s procedures to good effect, the annunciator staff, using a fully computerised system, display on screen the subject of debate, the stage of a Bill’s progress reached, the person speaking, the time that person began speaking, divisions and their results, and much else besides.
Because of the huge amount of detail that has to be crammed on to the small screens throughout the Palace, the titles of debates must often be compressed. This sub-editing is done in consultation with the Managing Editors. Otherwise, the staff operate largely autonomously, to high standards of accuracy, sometimes for very long hours.
The annunciator staff are always keen to find ways of improving what is already a first-class service to Members – and, as more and more MPs and staff are located away from the main building in, for example, the new Portcullis House, they will increasingly rely on the information provided on their screens to be kept abreast of developments in the Chamber, in Westminster Hall and in the Committees.
