Talk by Edward Wood at the Parliament, Data and Democracy meetup

1. UK Parliament:
the long road to open data
Edward Wood
Director of Research, House of Commons Library
secondreading.uk
@edwardwood99

2. “The history of Hansard is
strewn with the battles, great
and small, of a Parliament
conscious of its rights, privileges
and powers, and conscious of
the image, both of itself and of
its individual members.”
(Anthony Lester QC, 1994)

3. 1. Censorship
2. Money
3. Indexing

4. 1. Censorship

5. •Until the late 18th century, reporting
debates in Parliament was regarded
as a breach of Parliamentary
privilege
•Publishers who ignored the ban were
liable to fines or imprisonment

6. Reasons for secrecy…
1.Men could not be expected to give
their opinions freely in the public gaze
2.Not wanting the King to find out what
was going on

7. …and some ingenious
ways of getting round it

8. Proceedings of the
Lower Room of the
Robin Hood Society

9. Samuel Johnson

10. Debates of the
Senate of
Magna Lilliputia

11. Sr. R - t W - le

12. Sir Rat Widdle

14. Sir Robert Warpole

15. J - b R - s M - gg

16. J acob Rees Mogg

17. Brass Crosby (1725 – 1793)

18. Colonel George Onslow

19. John Wilkes (1725 – 1797)

20. 2. Money

21. Hansard is born:
and money is always too
tight to mention

22. •Radical publisher William Cobbett launches
his Parliamentary Debates in 1802
•He gets into financial difficulties and
ownership passes to Thomas Curson
Hansard in 1812 - Hansard was born.
•It was hard to make money from reporting
Parliament, so reporting is taken over by
Parliament in 1909

23. 1994: the new threat to Hansard
• Fast forward 65 years to the Thatcher
Government…
• 1980: Hansard’s publisher, Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, becomes a trading fund
• The subsidy from HM Treasury is gradually
reduced, leading to…
oSteep price rises
oFalls in sales and library subscriptions

24. This was a “parliamentary dereliction of
duty” because it resulted in a decrease
in the availability of factual and
objective information about the
legislative process at a time when the
people had “never been so extensively
governed.”
(Anthony Lester QC,
What Price Hansard, 1994)

25. 1994:
a great year for websites

26. 1994
•Birmingham City Council

27. 1994
•Birmingham City Council
•The Economist

28. 1994
•Birmingham City Council
•The Economist
•Amnesty International

29. 1994
•Birmingham City Council
•The Economist
•Amnesty International
•Bianca's Smut Shack

30. 1994
•Birmingham City Council
•The Economist
•Amnesty International
•Bianca's Smut Shack
(actually an online community)

31. 1996:
Parliament
gets in on the act

32. •Parliament website launched
•Hansard available free online
•HMSO privatised
•They need to find a new business
model…

34. Yes it was awful but…
•You didn’t need to visit a library
•It was easy to navigate to a given date
•Search engines [usually] located contributions by
individual MPs and Peers
•Search engines [sometimes] located discussion
of topics or bills

35. 3. Indexing

36. 1831:
Erskine May’s first job

37. Indexing in the House of Commons Library
• Thomas Erskine May was appointed Assistant
Librarian in 1831, 40 years before he became
Clerk of the House
• Along with Thomas Vardon (Librarian) they
indexed the Journal of the House and Acts of
Parliament
• Best practice emerged: “an Index for reference to
facts, and an analytical digest of precedents”

38. 1955:
the Strip Index

44. 1967:
the Commons Library and
Computers

45. blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah Library

46. blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah Library blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah modern

47. blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah Library blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah modern blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah computers

48. blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah Library blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah modern blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah computers blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah tricky blighters

49. 1968:
a bizarre collaboration with the Atomic Energy
Authority at Culham
198O:
POLIS launched – Parliamentary Online Information
System
1999:
the Library begins parsing data from Hansard

50. post script:
TWFY and Public Whip