Contact Details
Simon Nicholls
Editor of Debates
Official Report
House of Lords
London SW1 0PW
Tel:+44(0)20 7219 3397
Fax:+44(0)20 7219 3824
Email:
nichollss@parliament.uk
House of Lords
Official Report (Hansard)
Each daily Hansard contains a full report of the previous day’s proceedings in the House of Lords Chamber and Grand Committee, together with all Written Ministerial Statements and Answers to Written Questions.
Members’ speeches are reported in accordance with the century-old Hansard terms of reference: "not strictly verbatim...[but] substantially the verbatim report with repetitions and redundancies omitted and obvious mistakes corrected".
The Chamber sits on approximately 160 days a year, with a Grand Committee sitting concurrently on about 70 days. The Chamber sittings are reported by a team of 20 (16 reporters plus four sub-editors) while Grand Committees, which usually sit for four hours, are dealt with by a team of eight, who share the reporting and sub-editing duties. The need to cover Grand Committees on nearly half of all sitting days means that the Chamber list regularly contains a significant number of freelance staff. Written Statements and Answers are covered by one dedicated admin person plus one member of the editorial staff.
When each 20-30 minute section of text is dispatched to TSO (approximately two to three hours after the speech was made) it is swiftly posted to the Internet on the “Today in the Lords” page, accessible from the main parliamentary home page. Printed Daily Parts are available from 7.30 am the following day from the Printed Paper Office and from 8 am on the Internet. If the House sits after 2.30 am, a cut-off time on material published may be imposed. The remaining business from that sitting appears in the next Daily Part, and a photocopy of the text to be printed is made available in the Library.
We are a small, hard-working and happy team and welcome visits, exchanges and secondments involving our BIPRA colleagues.
