Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Tim started working at Hansard in 2021. In this post, he describes a typical working week for a parliamentary reporter.
Monday
As the February evenings get that bit less gloomy, so the days in the Hansard Committee section are getting that bit longer. The brief phoney war after the general election, when the Select Committees were not yet up and running and no Bills had made it through to Committee stage, has given way to weeks full of parliamentary business. And as parliamentary reporters, we cover everything—except the main Chamber.
Today is standard fare for a Monday: a Select Committee sitting, a Westminster Hall debate on an e-petition and a couple of Delegated Legislation Committees. Parliamentary reporters are responsible for logging proceedings in Westminster Hall (about which more anon), but I’m not on the rota to log today. On a Monday, all parliamentary reporters who aren’t required to log have the choice of working from home or in the office. As I live on the south coast, I’ll generally opt for the former.
With my laptop, extra monitor (essential, to my mind), tangled headphones and sturdy foot pedal, I have all I need to transcribe and edit from my bedroom desk. For whatever reason, and to the bemusement of some colleagues, I can’t use a foot pedal wearing shoes—I’ve tried, and it feels about as natural as riding a bike wearing flippers—so, comfortably unshod, I set to work.
Tuesday
The capricious Thameslink gods smile on me, and I make it into the office on time. That’s good, as we’ve a busy day ahead of us. There are four Bills in Committee, so it may be a late one.
After the first couple, you quickly lose count of the number of turns—five-minute chunks of debate—in a day, but I’d suppose that a normal day would include about seven or eight, other things being equal, and certainly more on a day like this. That perhaps doesn’t sound like a great many, but our aim is to submit them to our sub-editors within about 45 minutes. In that time, we have not only to get the words down, but to edit the copy in accordance with our terms of reference and style guide, check quotations, verify names and render parliamentary procedure correctly. I might have to check a Member’s speaking notes to determine the correct spelling of a constituent’s name, or play out a tricky passage for colleagues to decipher a word that I can’t quite make out.
In the event, I make the 7.39 from Blackfriars—not so late after all.
Wednesday
Most Committee colleagues will be in the office today, but I have a flexible working arrangement that means I work from home on Wednesdays.
There is again a smörgåsbord of forums to report. Our publication deadlines for Westminster Hall are the tightest—reports are online within three hours—so those turns are usually our priority. Today, there is also a sitting of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee, and I find myself picking up turns from that when I can: the debate is fascinating and, if occasionally quite upsetting, unusually thought-provoking. Colleagues check in on each other whenever we report emotionally challenging subjects, and management flag tricky debates ahead of time where possible, signpost us to House-wide support schemes and provide chocolate sustenance.
Thursday
I am down to log Westminster Hall, so I must remember my tie—the only day I need to dress for “business”. After completing a few turns in the office, I head to the Grand Committee Room to set up.
The log is a bare-bones account of what happens in the debate. The loggers focus on capturing in a shared, live document all those things that might be tricky to discern on an audio recording, such as who is speaking, a Member’s first few words (often uttered before the operator has switched on their mic) and references to other Members. Who did the Minister mean when she said “as the hon. Gentleman said earlier”? To create an accurate report, we need to know—and because they are in the room and have a grasp of the whole debate, the loggers can tell us.
Friday
If it’s a sitting Friday, colleagues in the House will be reporting proceedings there, but Fridays in the Committee section do not usually involve reporting live proceedings—Westminster Hall doesn’t sit and no Committees meet. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to do. If it’s been a busy week, we may have held over some proceedings to report, and colleagues are involved in a number of work streams that support our core work in various ways.
I have been working as an assistant tutor on our postgraduate diploma in parliamentary reporting course, so for my part Fridays currently consist of marking a few randomly selected turns from our new trainees. As well as assessing the turns’ accuracy and readability, I’m looking to see whether they adhere to our house style, capture the flavour of particular speeches, and include the correct parliamentary procedure. Today, readers (and trainees) will be pleased to learn, all the turns pass.