Technology and reporting in the UK Parliament

IPRS Meeting - Intersteno Congress - Prague July 2007

The publication of Hansard—the official report of parliamentary debates at Westminster­­—has always been linked to technological development. Indeed, “Hansard” is the surname of the printer who published the first record of parliamentary debates at the start of the 19th century.  Today, Hansard is available in both print and electronic formats: debates are printed the day after they take place in the daily part, and are collated, with corrections, in a monthly bound volume. They are available, too, on the internet: three hours after they take place, they can be seen on a rolling edition of Hansard.  The next day, the entire sitting is posted on the official parliament.uk website, and debates can be tracked through other websites such as Theyworkforyou.com.  The theme of this presentation, therefore is twofold: I shall look at the way in which technological developments such as digital audio and voice recognition software are changing the work of the parliamentary reporter at Westminster, but I shall consider, too, the impact of new media, such as video streaming and the internet, on our work.

            We have a team of 16 reporters who report proceedings in the main Chamber, only one of whom regularly uses a steno machine. One or two people use shorthand, and a couple use CAT­­—computer-aided transcription—but most of us report speeches from a tape or digital audio recording. Once, "a day in the list"—working an entire day without tape back-up—was the way in which a new steno reporter earned their spurs, but now almost all of us work from an audio recording. It may be a clunky technology, but it is simple to use: anyone can operate a tape machine, it takes only a few minutes to learn how to use a footpedal and only a couple of months to become a fast, accurate typist. To master steno, however, takes extensive training and, once someone is proficient in it, unless they are a CAT practitioner, they require the services of a typist.  It is more cost-effective to work directly from tape.

            Tape reporting may be a low-tech solution, but that does not mean that reporters have failed to keep up with the pace of technological change.  When I started working as a House reporter in 2000, each piece of work—or turn—was produced as a WordPerfect 5.1 document. We did not have access to e-mail and, if we wanted to check something on the internet we had to leave our desk, and trek to the end of room, hoping that none of our 15 colleagues was busy on the single browser we all had to share.  Today, we use Microsoft Word to produce our turns and we can all access e-mail and the internet from our desktop. Of course, this is standard office practice, but it has changed the way in which we work. For example, if an MP quotes from a newspaper report, we need to have sight of the original before we can include a direct quotation in a turn. In the past, this meant sending a note to the MP asking them to provide the quotation or, if that did not yield results, contacting the House of Commons Library and asking its staff to try and hack it down. Now, almost all such queries can he resolved by Google. E-mail, too, has become indispensable. One or two forward-looking MPs e-mail their speeches to us, so they can be accessed by reporters before delivery. Once Members’ speeches have been reported and edited, we can e-mail them to them before they are printed, but if they wish to make any corrections, they must do so in person or by phone so that we can be sure of the provenance of their suggestions. E-mail is used by the House authorities to inform staff of developments that affect them; after the recent failed car bombings in London and Glasgow, for example, the Serjeant at Arms Department e-mailed everyone in the House to update them on increased security and search measures.

            IT has brought us closer together, and a new Parliamentary Information, Communications and Technology Department—PICT—was established in 2006 to provide IT services to staff and Members of Parliament. It is the first Department to serve both the Commons and the Lords, and legislation—the Parliament (Joint  Departments) Bill had to be introduced to give it the statutory authority to do so.  PICT aims to eliminate duplication—previously each Department had its own dedicated IT team—and offer improved services to staff and Members. All IT requests are documented and logged to keep track of work in hand and identify problems early on.   Major projects, too, are PICT’s responsibility, and it has just appointed a project manager to replace Hansard’s ageing digital audio system. 

            Hansard’s relationship with PICT depends on the fulfilment of our unique, demanding requirements. The Hansard reporting system is highly customised so that, for example, we can process votes or Divisions accurately and efficiently.  Hundreds of Members take part in a Division and it is not unusual for two or three votes to follow in quick succession: names and numbers have to be recorded correctly for tight publication deadlines. If something goes wrong, we need specialised IT staff to solve the problem, sometimes at an ungodly hour: important votes on anti-terrorism measures, for example, usually take place after a lengthy debate in the early hours of the morning. 

            Communication and liaison are crucial in ensuring that this sophisticated system runs as smoothly as possible, and the Hansard IT liaison group was set up to help achieve that objective.  A high-level branch of the group has a strategic role, and can commission IT projects, while a low-level branch, of which I am a member, reports back on day-to-day problems, and helps to educate and inform editorial staff about IT developments. For example, a few months ago, we prepared our colleagues for convergence when the Hansard reporting system became part of the overall parliamentary network, and we are currently running an IT basic skills course for all grades of editorial staff.

            Training is vital if we are to keep up with the pace of change. I said earlier that tape reporting was a low-tech operation, but in recent years, reporters have had to become increasingly IT-literate to adapt to the changing way in which Hansard is produced and consumed.  Every time we set up a Member in our turns, their name appears within XML tags; every debate heading and every question on the Order Paper for departmental and Prime Minister's questions must be similarly tagged.  Onscreen, the tags simply appear as pink crescents, but they contain identifiers that enable the Library and other Departments to collect and analyse information about a Member's contribution to debates, or about the subjects raised at question time.  This "enrichment" of text could be the way of the future. As a teenager, William Hague, the former leader of the Tory party, used to save up for his weekly edition of Hansard, but an up and coming politician would be unlikely to do so today. They can access Hansard for free on the internet and Wikipedia-style hyperlinks would enable them to find out more about a particular subject or speaker they are interested in.

            To some extent, the future is already with us. The website, Theyworkforyou.com, allows users to examine their MP's voting and speaking record; it reproduces debates, and provides links to the relevant parts of Hansard. Theyworkforyou.com was recently subject to a lawsuit, the complainant arguing that they had been libelled in a speech reproduced on the site.  In the House, parliamentary privilege protects Members' right to free speech and renders them immune from prosecution—the privilege extends to their published speeches in Hansard—but the lawsuit demonstrates the challenges that arise from new technologies. We are already dealing with those challenges—happily, not legal ones—at Hansard. Three hours after Members make a speech, it is posted on the parliamentary website in a rolling edition of Hansard.  Video streaming is available, too, so as well as reading their speeches on the web. Members can, if they wish, watch themselves in action. Recently, a Member who had been called to order by the Speaker while trying to ask a question in Prime Minister's questions phoned our office to say that their remarks, as reported on the rolling Hansard, were incomplete.  Hansard is bound by the Speaker's ruling; as soon as he calls, "Order", we must terminate our report of the Member who is speaking. The MP, however, was not satisfied with this explanation: even though they had been cut off by the Speaker, they argued that we could lip-read the rest of their contribution from the video feed. "Erskine May", the definitive guide to the workings of Parliament, provides salient advice on the subject:

            “The Official Report”— in other words, Hansard—

“remains the authoritative record of what is said in the Commons, and the Speaker has stated that…tapes cannot be used for the purposes of casting doubt on the validity of the Official Report.”

            While the printed word retains its supremacy as the definitive version of parliamentary debates, new technologies can help us to do our work better    Digital audio recording is routinely used by reporters who report proceedings in Committee and in Westminster Hall—a debating forum established in 1999 for Back Benchers to raise issues of concern. Unlike House reporters, who all work in a room only a few metres away from the Chamber, Committee and Westminster Hail reporters are based in several different locations; indeed, many of them work in an office that is a 10-rninute walk away from the Palace of Westminster. Digital audio solves the problem of ferrying tapes around: once the reporter inputs the name of the Committee and their turn times they can access the relevant recording on their PC. Public Bill and delegated legislation Committees, in which legislation is scrutinised in detail, are logged by a sub-editor, and this log, together with Members' speaking notes, is scanned into the computer system, where it can be accessed by reporters.

            Voice recognition has been trialled by Hansard reporters in both Houses of Parliament, but its benefits remain unproven. It appears to offer a solution for reporters who have developed repetitive strain injury as a result of spending long hours at a computer keyboard, as it enables them to dictate their turns on to their PC. However the technology is not sophisticated enough to be adopted across the board. Reporters need to use the software for a couple of weeks before the system can recognise their voice, and soundproof accommodation is required for users.  Space is at a premium in Westminster, and it would not be feasible to provide such facilities for all reporters.

            Even more distant is the prospect of a voice recognition system that can access Members' speech directly, and turn it into text. There are 649 Members of Parliament with a wide range of regional accents, and every few years or so, an election brings a fresh batch to the House.  Voice recognition technology has not developed sufficiently to cope with this diverse and changing population, and it cannot render accurately the interplay between Members. Would it pick up the nuances of a quick-fire question and answer session, and what about sedentary interventions—the witty or rude remark shouted from the Back Benches that can have the House in stitches? Eyes, as well as ears, are needed to record debates: it is the reporter in the Gallery above the Chamber who has the reflexes to spot the unexpected, and the skill and intelligence to understand its significance.  While we must adapt to innovation, our skills as editors and interpreters will never be replicated by machines.