Votes And Proceedings - House Of Commons: Procès-verbaux - Chambre Des Communes

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There are a number of organisations that do not need to publish their House of Commons or unnumbered Act Papers on GOV.UK. The British Library collects the web PDFs of parliamentary papers from GOV.UK for statutory legal deposit. Therefore it is important that the documents are published according to GDS requirements, and that the files meet the PDF/A standards required by the GDS. The publication of the print-ready PDFs will allow anyone wishing to produce and sell professionally printed copies to do so.

Organisations should time the receipt of documents’ final web-optimised PDFs and print-ready PDFs so that GOV.UK publication can take place on the same day as the document is laid before Parliament. It is strongly suggested that both web PDFs and print PDFs are received before laying to expedite publication.

Publication and the evolution of policy

The information to be added to the relevant fields in the GOV.UK publishing system for each PDF uploaded includes:

Print-ready PDFs do not need to be uploaded to GOV.UK for unnumbered Act or unnumbered Command Papers. However, if these PDFs are available please consider whether their inclusion would be helpful for end-users. The Votes and Proceedings listed below in calendar view link to Parlinfo where HTML and PDF versions of the documents are available. 2023 When uploading House of Commons or unnumbered Act Papers, it is important that the correct Parliamentary Session year is selected. The period covered by an annual report and accounts will not always be the same as the Parliamentary Session. Failure to select the correct Session will create difficulties for users trying to locate your document. If you are in any doubt about the correct Session then please consult your parliamentary unit or the Parliamentary recess dates. Please see the Journal Office guidance for other information relating to unnumbered Act Papers. Publication and the evolution of policy Parliamentary papers must be laid in the Journal Office before they are published or otherwise distributed. Laying is usually undertaken by your department’s parliamentary unit, or that of your parent department. Some annual reports and accounts are laid by HM Treasury. Publishing before laying is considered discourteous to the House of Commons. Securely wrapped hard copies may be distributed under embargo before a document is laid, however the copies must not be unwrapped until after laying has taken place.

Checking that a paper has been laid

Parliamentary papers PDFs published on GOV.UK need to include specific information about the paper. Including the correct information, as advised in the official documents section of the GOV.UK Publisher Manual, will ensure that your document can be found by the GOV.UK search functionality for official documents, and harvested by the legal deposit libraries for statutory legal deposit.