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Printing and Publishing

At its meeting on 10 March, the Administration and Works Committee considered a proposal regarding the publishing of documents produced by the House and its committees. The House currently contracts The Stationery Office (TSO) to publish House documents; that contract expires in March 2016.

The Committee agreed that:

• Paper copies of House of Lords documents will continue to be made available to members through the Printed Paper Office (PPO). Although there will be some cosmetic changes in appearance, there will be no change in current Members’ entitlement to papers or the documents available.
• Hansard will no longer be posted overnight to Members’ external postal addresses. If a Member needs to receive Hansard regularly and is unable to collect it from the PPO or access it online they can ask for copies to be posted using the normal post forwarding arrangements or, exceptionally, the morning after a sitting day.
• The facility for members to subscribe to receive paper copies of House of Lords documents other than Hansard at external postal addresses will be discontinued. Most documents relating to sittings of the House have short publishing deadlines, unpredictable volumes and a very short shelf-life, to the extent that most are already out of date when they are received. All documents are available online and paper copies can still be collected from the PPO. Requests made under special circumstances, such as illness, will be considered sympathetically.
• The Administration will cease external sale of paper copies of House documents, as there is very limited market demand for these.

The Administration will also seek to improve the quality of electronic publications for third parties through better online presentation and delivery. Efforts to realise one of the Administration’s strategic tasks, to “exploit developments in ICT, information management and data systems to enable Members and staff to work in more flexible and cost-effective ways”, have already been made, including the release of the new House of Lords Business application for iPads (downloaded by searching for Lord business papers in the iTunes store).

Changes to the order paper, House of Lords Business and subscriptions will take effect from the start of the new Parliament; other changes will be introduced incrementally.