Official Report (Hansard)
(Editor: Mary Villiers)

1  Purpose

The Department of the Official Report is responsible for providing a verbatim record of the proceedings of the House and of Grand Committees off the Floor.

2  Organisation

The Department currently employs 21 full-time and 8 part-time staff. It is headed by the Editor of Debates. There are a Deputy Editor, 4 Assistant Editors (one post is job-shared), 2 Chief Reporters (one post is job-shared), 14 Reporters (one post is job-shared), one Assistant Reporter, an Office Manager, a Personal Secretary (on a job-share basis) and 2 Executive Officers.

3  Activities and Financial Performance

As indicated in the Review of the Year (paragraphs 1 and 2) and Appendix C, both the financial year 2000-01 and calendar year 2000 were exceptionally busy. With the House sitting on 169 days in 2000 and with an average length of sitting of 7 hours 28 minutes, there were many late sittings and the House rose after 10.30 pm on 77 occasions. 169 Daily Reports and 38 weekly volumes were published. From these, 9 Bound Volumes will be compiled. The electronic version of Hansard is published daily on the Parliamentary Data and Video Network and the Internet and, in the latter case, was the subject of 4,561,766 hits during the year - more than twice as many as in 1999-2000.

The budget for the financial year was £1,732,000, against which total expenditure of £1,735,182 was incurred. This compares with total expenditure of £2,016,382 in 1999-2000 - a reduction of some 16% - and includes the cost of the new digital sound recording system, which was successfully introduced and is now contributing valuably to the efficient production of the Official Report.

4  Future Activities

Following the first experimental pilot project for the electronic transmission of written answers from Government departments, it is hoped to roll out the system to a number of departments in the course of the coming year.