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This type of legislative organization is known as the Westminster System, after the Westminster Palace in which the UK Parliament is located. It can be found, with some variation, in many of the former possessions of now defunct British Empire, including Australia, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. The Westminster system consists of a system in which one house is elected and the other appointed, an executive branch made up of members of the legislature, the presence of opposition parties, and a ceremonial head of state, who is different from the head of government.
Just to get a feel for what we are discussing, let’s take a moment and peek in on today’s session in the House of Commons and the House of Lords at a website called Parliamentlive.TV . Once you bring up the page, just click on the either of the Watch Now options, or it there are none then select the Archives option to the left and look for the Watch Now option there and then listen in.
What you have just heard is the product of over seven-hundred years of development in the style of British Government. Fortunately, most of that development has been annotated and archived and is available for us to peruse in our research projects in the form of the collected Parliamentary Papers.
The Parliamentary Papers are the record of Parliamentary deliberations in the form of bills, reports, minutes, committee proceedings, and appropriations. Each time Parliament meets the record grows with the addition of new documentation. The purpose of this collection is to provide Parliament itself with a detailed record of everything that was discussed and concluded as well as to provide those outside Parliament with access to the proceedings throughout the history of the institution.
There are many different types of documents among the Parliamentary Papers. Initially, locating the information you need may seem daunting. However, once you become acquainted with the organization of the documents you will be able to narrow your search down to specific areas and the collection will prove an invaluable resource for your research. Here we will provide a brief outline of the organization of the Parliamentary Papers with links to further explanations of each area. Basically, there are four types of Parliamentary Papers:
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