Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Hannah joined Hansard as a Parliamentary Reporter in 2021 and has helped to train two cohorts of new colleagues. In 2024, she began her new role as a House Reporter. Here, she explains a typical day—if there’s ever such a thing in Hansard.
11 am
The first thing I do every day is check the list to see when my first turn is – like all editorial staff at Hansard, my day revolves around turns (a five-minute chunk of debate). In the House, where we exclusively report the Commons Chamber, our day is governed by “the list”, which is a rota setting out the times for our turns throughout the day. The list dictates what time I get in each morning and what time I’ll be going home – it’s an important document for any House reporter.
12 pm
If I’m last in the list, my day begins with fragment duty. Any given day in the Commons Chamber sees a wide range of parliamentary business and procedure, from Government Bills to urgent questions, ten-minute rule Bills and the scary-sounding guillotine; because of our tight reporting deadlines, it can be tricky to deal with complex procedure on the fly, so, each day, one of us takes on fragment duty. A fragment is simply a document prepared in advance that a colleague can pick up and insert into the chunk of debate they’re reporting when the time comes.
I’ll start my day going over the order paper to see what might require fiddly or difficult procedure and prepare these “fragments” ahead of time, in a sort of Hansard-Blue Peter crossover. It can be a little time-consuming, but it’s a bit like starting the day with a bunch of logic puzzles—and that can be pretty satisfying.
11.30 am, 12.45 pm, 2 pm, and so on…
Most of my day is then spent doing turns. Checking the list, I’ll head into the Chamber and watch my turn live. There are always two reporters in the Press Gallery, serving as two sets of eyes and ears; if my turn is at 12.45 pm, I’ll be sitting in the Hansard seats (which we call “the box”) by 12.39 pm, ready to help the reporter ahead of me with anything they need, from identifying MPs to sending notes down the chute.
Every turn is different and presents new challenges, depending on the style in which the speech is delivered, the topic being discussed and the emotional temperature of the debate. In the morning we’ll see ministerial questions and statements; in the afternoon we’ll watch debates on Bills and other forms of legislation. I might watch PMQs in the morning and then, throughout the afternoon, hear about the Chagos islands, pensions, net zero targets, prison reforms and – no less importantly – a bypass in a small town in Surrey.
7.30 pm (or later, depending on when the last debate finishes)
If I’m last in the list, I get to do “the run”, which is a chance to boost my step count and my adrenaline. MPs speaking in the last debate of the day tend to leave the parliamentary estate swiftly after the debate ends, so we can’t call or email their office to verify anything with them – like the spelling of a constituent’s name – which means we need to catch them before they leave and ask them in person.
Waiting until the ceremonial mace has been removed, I race down the few flights of stairs that separate our office from the Chamber and try my best to catch the MPs before they leave with any questions my colleagues might have. This means that if another reporter has a Catherine/Katherine/Katharine mentioned in their turn, they won’t have to wait until the following morning to get a reply on the spelling. Accuracy is really important to Hansard, so this is a crucial part of the day, as well as injecting a little excitement into my evening.
8 pm (or 9 pm, or 10 pm, or 11 pm…)
If an item of business has protected time – meaning it’s been allocated a certain number of hours for debate – our finish time can be delayed. This is fairly common, and can apply to all sorts of debates. Sometimes it means staying late to cover dramatic, high-tension moments such as the Brexit debates, but more often it means reporting a speech on house building or flood defences at 8.30 pm. We’re here until the House rises, no matter what.
Once the House has adjourned and my last turn has been sent, I get to head home. The next morning, I might have a look at my published turns – although I’ve been at Hansard for a while, I still find it really exciting to see my work published online or in the paper daily edition of Hansard (as does my mum!).