Hansard

From Free net encyclopedia

Hansard is the traditional name for the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. In addition to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a Hansard is maintained for the Parliament of Canada and the Canadian provincial legislatures, the Parliament of Australia and the Australian state parliaments, the national Parliament of South Africa and South Africa's provincial legislatures, the Parliament of New Zealand, the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, the Parliament of Malaysia, the Parliament of Singapore, the Legislative Council of Brunei and the Parliament of Sri Lanka.

1 Origins
2 Characteristics
3 Canadian Hansard and machine translation
4 See also
5 External links
6 Notes

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Origins

Before 1771, the British Parliament had long been a highly secretive body. The official record of the actions of the House were publicly available, but there was no such record of debates. The publication of remarks made in the House became a breach of Parliamentary privilege, punishable by the two Houses. As more people became interested in parliamentary debates, more individuals published unofficial accounts of parliamentary debates. Editors were at worst subjected to fines. Several editors used the device of veiling parliamentary debates as debates of fictitious societies or bodies. The names under which parliamentary debates were published include Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society and Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia.

In 1771, Parliament ceased to punish the publishing of its debates, partly due to the campaigns of John Wilkes on the behalf of free speech. There then began several attempts to publish reports of debates. Among the early successes, the Parliamentary Register published by John Almon and John Debrett began in 1775 and ran until 1813.

William Cobbett, a noted radical and publisher began publishing Parliamentary Debates as a supplement to his Political Register in 1802, eventually extending his reach back with the Parliamentary History. Cobbett's reports were printed by Thomas Curson Hansard from 1809; in 1812, with his business suffering, Cobbett sold the Debates to Hansard. Neither Cobbett nor Hansard ever employed anyone to take down notes of the debates, which were taken from a multiplicity of sources in the morning newspapers. For this reason, editions of Hansard are not to be absolutely relied upon as a guide to everything discussed in Parliament.

Hansard was remarkably successful in seeing off competition such as Almon and Debrett, and the later Mirror of Parliament published by J.H. Barrow from 1828 to 1843; Barrow's work was more comprehensive but he checked each speech with the Member and allowed them to 'correct' anything they wished they had not said. The last attempt at a commercial rival was The Times which published debates in the 1880s. In 1889, the House decided to subsidise its publication so that a permanent record was available and it included more speeches and a near-verbatim record of front-bench speeches.

The Hansard of today, a fully comprehensive account of every speech, began in 1909 when Parliament took over the publication. 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.

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Characteristics

The Hansard is not a verbatim account of debates in Parliament. It seeks to eliminate "repetitions and redundancies". One instance of such an eliminated redundancy involves the calling of members in the House of Commons. In that House, the Speaker must call on a member 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 Honourable Member for Constituency Name" rather than by name, Hansard adds, in parentheses, the name of the member being referred to. When a Member simply points at another whose constituency he cannot remember, Hansard identifies them.

Interjections from seated members generally are only included if the member who is speaking at the time refers to it. Any interruption to debate, whether from the member losing his place in his notes, being shouted down or the physical invasion of the chamber, will be marked with the word "(Interruption)".

Hansard also publishes written answers made by Government ministers in response to questions formally posed by members. Since 1909 — and for important votes before then — Hansard has listed how members have voted in divisions. Furthermore, the proceedings and debates in committee are also published in separate volumes.

For many years the Hansard did not formally acknowledge the existence of parties in the House, though in 2003 this changed and so members' party affiliations are now identified.

The Internet, with the help of volunteers, has made the UK Hansard more accessible than ever before. It is possible to review and search the UK Hansard from June 2001, with the exception of the standing committees. It is also possible to set up key word email alerts for topics of interest or to receive emails whenever a given MP speaks in the commons or receives an answer to a written question. This is a significant development in terms of democratic accountability. More parochially it reportedly allows MP’s husbands and wives to check what their partners have been doing all day.

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Canadian Hansard and machine translation

Given the bilingual nature of the Canadian federal government, two equivalent Canadian Hansards are maintained, one in French and one in English. This makes it a natural parallel text, and it is often used to train French-English machine translation programs. In addition to being already translated and aligned, the size of the Hansards and the fact new material is always being added makes it an attractive corpus. However, its usefulness is hindered by the fact that the translations, although accurate in meaning, are not always literally exact.

In one instance, during a Liberal filibuster in the Canadian Senate, Senator Philippe Gigantes was accused of reading one of his books only so that he could get the translation for free through the Hansard. Template:Ref

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