Official documents include House of Commons Papers, Command papers, Departmental Papers, Reports and Hansard (House of Commons and Lords). See here for a useful glossary of terms.
For useful information on the work of Parliament see the U.K. Parliamentary website - http://www.parliament.uk/
The Library only purchases those of relevance to courses being taught at Teesside University and therefore does not have a complete sets. Those that are available can be found using Discovery.
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688.
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A copy of the full terms of the Proquest Archives licence can be found below.
Access Command Papers from the Official Documents website
Reports and publications of committees can also be found on the Parliamentary website.
The following documents are all types of Command Paper:
The first numbered series of Command Papers was introduced in 1833. The current series began in 2019 and uses the prefix CP. The prefix changes with each series:
These are the working papers of Parliament and include publications of Government Departments, Committees, National Audit Office, Parliamentary Ombudsman, Health Service Ombudsman,and reports of major inquiries.
For more information see: Parliamentary papers.
House of Commons papers are normally numbered sequentially within the parliamentary session and prefixed with HC e.g. HC 530 2015-16 (Learning from mistakes: an investigation report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman into how the NHS failed to properly investigate the death of a three-year old child).
House of Lords papers are normally prefixed with HL
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688.
Accessibility Statement (This link opens in a new window)
Can I access this resource?
To access ProQuest Archives you must be either:
If you are not a member of any of these groups then unfortunately our licence does not allow access to the resource
Use of licenced material
All electronic databases are covered by licences, and failure to adhere to the terms of the licences could result in the University losing access to these resources.
All databases are provided for educational use only.
A copy of the full terms of the Proquest Archives licence can be found below.
The Official Report (Hansard) is the edited verbatim (word-for-word) report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Daily Debates from Hansard are published on the website the next working day.
Early Day Motions are formal motions tabled by MPs to draw attention to an event or cause. Very few are actually debated, but MPs show their support by signing the motion. Each EDM is given a unique number, starting at 1 at the beginning of each parliamentary session.
Many of these are now online on the Official documents website