Lifecycle of Parliamentary Documents: United Kingdom
or sessional order are followed, or if it is done at the direction of a chamber, or if it is done in a manner that follows the accepted practice for doing so.[1]
In the House of Commons, Standing Orders 158 to 159, and in the House of Lords, Standing Order 69, provide that delivering a copy of a Command Paper or statutory instrument to the Votes and Proceedings Office on any day during the existence of Parliament constitutes laying the document.[2] Laying the document before Parliament is typically done by the parliamentary clerk of the government department responsible for producing the paper, who formally presents the document and lays it upon the Table of the House.[3] The purpose of this is to make the information in the papers available to the House and its Members, who may go to see the document as soon as it is laid.[4] This ensures the “general principle that the House should have before it the information, including documents, necessary to enable it to fulfil its responsibility to scrutinise and hold to account the conduct and administration of government”[5] can be met. In addition to parliamentary papers, there are some Acts that require statutory instruments, which are secondary legislation such as regulations, to be laid before Parliament. When this obligation must be fulfilled, the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 requires a copy to be laid before each House.[6]
2. Legal Deposit
As a general matter of the law of legal deposit, every work published in the UK must be deposited with the British Library within a month of publication, and upon demand, copies must also be provided to the other legal deposit libraries in the UK.[7] Since 2013, this requirement has included non-print materials, such as websites and electronic publications.[8] Parliamentary documents are not exempt from this legal obligation and thus are deposited with the British Library.
- ↑ Id. art. 1(I).
- ↑ House of Commons, Standing Orders, 2019-20, HC 314, https://perma.cc/B3D5-49W7; Standing Orders of the House of Lords, 2020-21, HL 232, https://perma.cc/Q6YP-3SR9.
- ↑ Erskine May, supra note 4, ¶ 7.28. See also The National Archives, Parliamentary Papers Guidance, supra note 5, at 23.
- ↑ House of Commons Journal Office, Guide to Laying Papers, supra note 7, ¶ 7. See also 490 Parl. Deb. HC (6th ser.) (2009) col. 307, https://perma.cc/CL5W-AR3H.
- ↑ Erskine May, supra note 4, ¶ 21.26, https://perma.cc/38WQ-6X32.
- ↑ Statutory Instruments Act 1946, 9 & 10 Geo. 6, c. 36, https://perma.cc/7FR5-97XG.
- ↑ The legal deposit libraries are The British Library; The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the University Library, Cambridge; and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. The Library of Queen’s University, Belfast, is not a Legal Deposit Library under the terms of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act but it is treated as one for official publications in Northern Ireland.
- ↑ Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, c. 28, https://perma.cc/Q3YF-LBGU.
