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 ...

In 1857, William Ewart Gladstone took out this subscription to Hansard, 10 years before he first became Prime Minister; he eventually served as Prime Minister of four administrations (1868–74, 1880–85 ...

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The Government publishes a number of Bills each Parliamentary session in draft form before they are introduced in Parliament as formal Bills. A Draft Bill is published to enable consultation and ...

The summer of 1940 saw the Battle of Britain, the aerial conflict between the Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffere, reach its apex. When in this speech Churchill stated 'Never in the field of ...

Nancy Astor won seven elections between 1919 and 1935, retiring from Parliament in 1945. The MP who replaced her was also a woman, Lucy Middleton, who held the seat until 1951 when Astor's son Jakie ...

The Bill of Pain and Penalties ‘for an Act to deprive Caroline of the rights and title Queen Consort and to dissolve her marriage to George' was the King's solution to ending his unhappy marriage, to ...

Committees 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, ...

Women finally got equal voting rights with men when the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 was passed. This allowed women over 21 to vote for the first time. Electoral equality between men and women has been ...

Sir Augustus Clifford (1788–1877) was a Naval Captain appointed Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod from 1832 to 1877. Clifford's long tenure was a time of transition for Black Rod's Office, with a ...

Emily Wilding Davison's diary was kept whilst she was imprisoned in Holloway and includes a graphic description of her hunger strike and her experience of force-feeding in 1912. In the early twentieth ...

Find Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of the House of Lords. ParliamentNow presents information from the UK Parliament annunciator system, covering both the House of Commons and House of Lords.