Two hundred years ago a quiet revolution was happening in Parliament. The story was told in a Sunday Supplement series in May 2002.

An official welcome from the Speaker for reporters covering debates was to lead to the birth of the official record of what is said in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Now we call it Hansard and the name of an obscure 18th century London printer has turned into a worldwide brand. A string of Commonwealth countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Zimbabwe, retain the name for reports of what happens in their parliaments.

But the origins of how it all began are murky. Once the press were barred. Then the Speaker let them in. And various printing ventures led to the prominence Hansard now holds. But it has never been intended to be a record of every word, every cough and snarl, in the two chambers of parliament.

In 'Writing Down the House', Nick Utechin looked back to the beginnings of Hansard and finds out how it operates in 2003 - and not just on the printed page any more. The arrival of the Internet has seen big changes for Hansard.

Click here to listen to Part One of Writing Down the House

Click here to listen to Part Two of Writing Down the House

The Westminster Hour talked to series presenter Nick Utechin.

Hansard can trace its origins back to the start of the 19th century. But what happened before then - weren't debates in Parliament recorded at all?

NU: No, there was effectively no formal reporting of debates in the 17th and 18th centurues. But pamphlets and handbills relating to events in the House were hawked for sale in the streets of London, and those who wished to know what was actually going on could find out in that way (sometimes in scurrilous form!). Remember, also, that there weren't any national newspapers (in the form that we know them today) until the late 18th century.

The way debates did start to get reported for posterity - it was all a bit unplanned - almost an accident - wasn't it?

NU: Yes, in the years before 1803, reporters for newspapers had, on occasion, managed to inveigle themselves into the public gallery of the House, and note-taking was certainly going on; they would carefully sit out of the sight of the Speaker, although he and other officials of the Commons were well aware of what was going on. By 1803, there was a sense of inevitability in the matter, and the situation was formalised on May 14th that year when Speaker Abbott noted in his private diary that he had, that day, instructed the Sergeant-at-Arms to let members of the press into the Gallery before members of the public.

Hansard is now a name known all over the world - apart from our Parliament, it's the name of the official report of many Commonwealth parliaments, including those in Canda and New Zealand. But who was Hansard and what did he do?

NU: One of the first people to take advantage of the new situation was the Radical, William Cobbett (later famous for his Rural Rides), who was already publishing a weekly political newspaper. He added a supplement, called Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates - a systematic pull-together of reports of Commons events and debates from other publications. In the same year of 1803, the young Thomas Curson Hansard - son of Luke Hansard, the Official Printer - set up his own printing concern. Six years later, Cobbett's financial situation was pretty bad, and he gave the contract to print its debates to Hansard; three years after that, he sold the entire concern to Hansard. And it was Thomas Hansard who then put his own reporters into the gallery, and eventually put his own name onto the front page of the debates.

But Hansard is far from a verbatim account of debates in Parliament. Why don't they report everything that is said?

NU: They do...just about! But it's a common misconception that it's a verbatim report. It set out to be a fair and accurate record of what was said in the House, and remains so. But there has always had to be 'clarification' and, on occasions, 'revision' (if, for example, a Member when speaking makes an error in a name or such-like). Even as recently as the mid-1980s, Speaker Weatherill ruled that Hansard need not record interventions made by Members in a sedentary position unless the Minister (or whoever is on his feet at the time) refers back to that intervention!

When you read the Hansard accounts of great moments - whether at times of war or political upheaval - do you get the sense that history is being made, or does it just feel like words on a page?

NU: I suppose, in the end, you don't get a true sense of events. Hansard chooses to constrain itself by dealing only with the spoken word. Thus I point out in the first programme of the series that when a really serious physical fight broke out in the Chamber in 1893 during a stage of Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill, the reporters could only fall back on the hallowed word 'Interruption'...and, at one point, 'grave interruption'. In more recent times, the day after 'Bloody Sunday', the MP Bernadette Devlin - incensed at not having been called to speak - attacked the-then Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling. Again: 'Interruption'! You have to read that Hansard report very carefully (and spot that another MP moments later, says that he cannot condone what has just happened) to know that anything had happened!

How big an operation is Hansard these days?

NU: Hansard now has about 50 editorial staff, covering the Commons, Lords and committees. Everything is geared to a daily deadline of 7.30 each morning that Parliament is in session, when the printed record of the previous day's proceedings is made available in the library. No reporter in the Commons does more than a 10-minute stint at a time (and there's always an overlapping of staff to provide at least one extra pair of eyes and ears). At PMQs, the shifts are only 5 minutes long! As soon as each reporter has completed his or her stint (either using shorthand, stenograph machine or note-taking to det against the sound feed), they go down to the Hansard office behind and a touch below the press gallery to type up (and tidy up!) theirportion of text. And then there are sub-editors to take a second look. Yes, it's a big operation!

How much has new technology and the arrival of the Internet affected the work of Hansard?

NU: The 7.30 deadline remains the pivotal one. But an hour later, the on-line text has to be up on the Hansard website. A computer version began in 1994 - intiially, it was only accessible on linked computers within the Palace of Westminster, but now it's available on demand! Bill Garland, the present editor of Hansard, told me that only about 2,000 daily copies of the printed edition are sold to individuals or institutions (at a fiver a time) - but that the online version has many thousands of hits per month.

Producer: Viv Black, Testbed Productions