The Speaker of the House of Commons chairs debates in the Commons chamber. The holder of this office is an MP who has been elected to be Speaker by other Members of Parliament. During debates they ...

The Lords sitting in the medieval House of Lords were of two types, the lords spiritual and the lords temporal ...

The larger group in the Commons were the 222 burgesses, two from each town allowed to return representatives, known as a borough. Another 12 joined after 1536 when Wales was united to England. The ...

The UK public elects 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and concerns in the House of Commons. MPs consider and propose new laws, and can scrutinise government policies by ...

Until recently Hansard reporters used shorthand to record proceedings in the Chamber. This notebook belonged to William Dixon (1893-1979), who said in “Our Hansard” (1950) that the Hansard reporter's ...

Much of the work of the House of Commons takes place in committees, made up of around 10 to 50 MPs. These committees examine issues in detail, from government policy and proposed new laws, to wider ...

The modern UK Parliament can trace its origins all the way back to two features of Anglo-Saxon government from the 8th to 11th centuries. These are the Witan and the moot. The Witan was the occasion ...

In 1688, 30 years after Charles's II was restored to the throne the country was invaded by a foreign army and its King fled, as the Crown was offered by Parliament to his own nephew and son-in-law ...

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"I welcome the Supreme Court's judgment that the prorogation of Parliament was unlawful. The judges have rejected the Government's claim that closing down Parliament for five weeks was merely standard ...

How did the Jewel Tower play an important role in the preservation of Parliamentary records? Find out more about the Tower between the 17th and 19th centuries The early archives of the Commons ...

Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran (1910-1983) was a journalist and Conservative peer. He entered the House of Lords in 1958, soon gaining a reputation as a political outsider noted for his eccentricities ...