How to look for records of... Hansard

1. Why use this guide?

Use this guide if you are looking for the official report of Parliamentary debates held in the House of Commons and the House Lords. The records are commonly known as ‘Hansard’ and cover 1803 to the present.

2. What is Hansard?

Hansard is an edited verbatim report of what is said in the House of Commons and House of Lords Chamber, Westminster Hall, and Grand Committee. The speeches are recorded and then edited to remove repetition and obvious mistakes but always ensure that this does not take away from the meaning of what was said. Written statements are also included.

Parliamentary Debates are known as Hansard after Thomas Curson Hansard, the first printer and publisher of the reports. In 1803 it was an unofficial report which compiled reports of speeches from press reporters. This means Hansard during the 19th century is not a complete record of what was said because it omitted much parliamentary business deemed to be of less public interest by newspapers, and not all speakers were fully reported even for debates on important issues.

In 1909, Hansard was established as the Official Report of Parliament, with all speeches and debates now recorded. Reporters and editors were employed in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. At first, the official report was known as the ’Parliamentary Debates, Official Report’ but in 1943 the title ‘Hansard’ was restored.

Hansard also includes records of votes, known as divisions, although as with debates, these are selective before 1909. In older volumes only the numbers of ‘ayes’ and ‘noes’ in the House of Commons and ‘contents’ and ‘not contents’ in the House of Lords are counted. Later on it was recorded how each individual Member or Peer voted. After 1909 all divisions are included in Hansard, including how each individual Member or Peer voted.

3. Parliamentary Debates pre-1803

Before Hansard, William Cobbett compiled records of parliamentary debates and speeches from 1066 to 1803 in his publication “Parliamentary History of England”. However, it is less comprehensive than the later official Hansard reports. You can find all 36 volumes digitised by the Bodleian Library.

The British History Online website also has several smaller volumes that are less extensive than Cobbett’s collection, but may contains more detail for the time periods covered. These volumes are:

• Simonds d’Ewes, ‘The Journals of All the Parliaments During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth’ (Shannon, Ire, 1682) Dates: 1559-1601
• Heywood Townshend, ‘Historical Collections: Or, An Exact Account of the Proceedings of the Four Last Parliaments of Q. Elizabeth’ (London, 1680) Dates: 1589-1601
• Chandler, ‘The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons’ (London, 1742) Dates: 1660-1739
• Anchitell Grey, ‘Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons’ (London, 1769) Dates: 1667-1694

Various other collections of debates were published in the late 18th century, of which the most significant is ‘The Parliamentary Register’ for the period 1743-1803. The Parliamentary Archives collections held at TNA include a set of ‘The Parliamentary Register’ covering 1743-1793, YREG.

Historians have also collected and published unofficial records of early division lists, of which the most significant is Donald Ginter’s, ‘Voting records of the British House of Commons, 1761-1820.’ See Further Reading below.

4. Online records

Hansard can be found online as follows:

• Parliament website, 22 November 1803 to the present, apart from 2004-2006 (for which see the archived databases linked below). This includes content from the Historic Hansard website plus more recent debates. It can be searched and browsed, and search results filtered, for example by name of Member. Alternatively if you know the series, volume and column number you want, you can go directly to the relevant Hansard content.
• Historic Hansard website, 22 November 1803 to 17 March 2005. The search functionality on this website is very limited, however the website remains very useful for its indexes, which include by Volume, People, Constituencies, Offices, Bills, Acts and Divisions.
• Archived databases of House of Commons debates, 1988–2016, and House of Lords debates, 1995-2016. Useful where there are gaps on other websites.
• Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers. This is a subscription website you can access on TNA computers by visiting us at Kew. You may also be able to access it via a large reference library such as a university library. It enables you to search Hansard content alongside other published Parliamentary Papers.
• House of Commons Standing Committee/General Committee Debates, 1997-2015. Standing Committees became known as General Committees from 2006.

Please be aware that Hansard pre-2010 is historical content that was digitally scanned from physical copies and may contain errors in the text or odd formatting.

Most importantly, there are also known gaps in the historical content (i.e. when volumes are missing), particularly before 1918. These are most easily identified by the Volume index on the Historic Hansard website – click on each series to see a list of volumes, the dates they cover, and whether they were successfully loaded onto the website or not. If a volume is missing, you will need to consult a printed volume.

House of Commons Standing Committee debates before 1997 are not currently available online, and printed volumes should be consulted.

Volumes for 1919-2002 can be found at YHC/OF/SC

Universities and large reference libraries may also hold printed copies of Hansard.

5. Hansard – Printed volumes

The original hard copy volumes of Hansard include some information not in the online Hansard. There are lists of peers and MPs, members of the Government and some senior staff given at the start of a Parliament or session. There were also extensive tables of contents, person and subject indices, and composite index volumes.

Hard copy volumes of Hansard are available as orderable documents. To view them you will need to identify the reference of the volume you need using the catalogue and request the volume in our reading room, or pay for copies to be sent to you.

To search the catalogue, you will need to know the date of the debate you are looking for, or at least an approximate date, each Hansard volume covers approximately 20 days of debate sessions.

If you only know the year of the debate, you can use the Index for that year. The Index is sorted by subject and speaker and will provide a volume number and column number where the speech can be found.

The House of Lords and House of Commons debates were collated into the same bound volumes from 1803 until 1908. But after it became the official report in 1909 they were separated into individual series for each House.

House of Commons and House of Lords combined volume series:

• First series (22 November 1803 – 28 February 1820) YHAN/1
• Second series (21 April 1820 – 23 July 1830) YHAN/2
• Third series (26 October – 5 August) 1891 YHAN/3
• Fourth series (9 February 1892 – 21 December) 1908 YHAN/4

House of Commons only volume series:

• Series five (16 February 1909 – 12 December 1980) YHC/OF/S5
• Series six (16 March 1981 – 18 November 2004) YHC/OF/S6

House of Lords only volume series:

• Series five (16 February 1909 – 17 March 2005) YHL/PO/OF/S5

House of Commons Standing Committee debates:

• 1919-2002 YHC/OF/SC

Universities and large reference libraries may also hold printed copies of Hansard.

6. Other sources

‘The Mirror of Parliament’ was a competitor to Hansard between 1828 and 1841, which employed Charles Dickens as a parliamentary reporter. It is a publication which may be found in large reference libraries.

‘The Penguin Hansard’ was published during the Second World War to make Parliamentary debates more accessible to the public. For more information see the Commons Hansard blog, The Penguin Hansard.

House of Commons division records are recorded fully from 1836 as part of Votes and Proceedings. They may be useful particularly before Hansard becomes a full record in 1909. Search the series YHC/CL/JO/6 for ‘Divisions’.

The Journals of the House of Lords, YHL/PO/JO/2, and House of Commons, YHC/CL/JO/2, are the formal record of proceedings in each House. They do not generally contain debates and speeches (with some exceptions, such as evidence taken on divorce bills in the House of Lords, and speeches by the monarch). However they do contain much transactional information not found in Hansard, such as the formal readings of each stage of a bill (which will only be in Hansard if there was debate) and papers laid on the table. To trace a bill through Parliament, the Journals should always be consulted alongside Hansard.

7. Further reading

Maurice Bond, ‘Guide to the Records of Parliament’ (1971)

William Cobbett, ‘The Parliamentary History of England, from the earliest period to the year 1803.’

Hansard Writing Team, ‘The Hansard Story’ (House of Commons, 2018)

John Vice and Stephen Farrell, ‘The History of Hansard’ (House of Lords Library,

Commons Hansard Blog

Donald E Ginter, ‘Voting records of the British House of Commons, 1761-1820’ (1995)

J . Sainty and D Dewar, ‘Divisions in the House of Lords : an analytical list, 1685 to 1857’ (1976)

Parliamentary Archives blog, Jargon Buster: Hansard and the Journals

The Victorian Commons, Accessing Hansard online: a research guide