Definitions

• Accounts and Papers - Miscellaneous category of sessional papers which includes treaties and international agreements, financial and statistical reports.
• Bills - Public legislation placed before the Parliament. Private bills relating to personal affairs, such as divorce, are not part of the sessional papers.
• Breviate -Index to the major papers of the period. Also called a "select list."
• Command Papers - A category of sessional papers that do not originate in Parliament, but are presented to it "by command of His or Her Majesty."
• Debates - Record of what is said in Parliament. Often called Hansards after the first publisher.
• Diaries - Personal narratives of parliamentary speeches and proceedings
• Journals - Official account of the proceedings of Parliament.
• Parliamentary Papers - Loosely refers to all the records of Parliament, or more specifically to only the sessional papers
• Reports of Royal Commissions - A category of sessional papers which presents the findings of research or investigations.
• Rolls of Parliament - Earliest records of parliament, up to the sixteenth century
• Select Committees - The main investigative body of the Parliament until the mid-nineteenth century.
• Select List - a breviate or index of major papers. So called because it is only concerned with a selection of important papers.
• Sessional Papers - Working papers of Parliament, including the bills, reports, and papers.
• Votes and Proceedings - Compiled from the minute books kept by the Clerk of the House.

Links to: About/Basics/Debates/Definitions/Diaries/Index/Journals/Papers/Papers: Indexes