Parliamentary Privilege: Free Access To Parliamentary Records Between Now And The Election

April 21, 2010 - PRLog -- On what will your readers’ decisions on 6th May be based?

With the party machines manipulating the internet for their own ends more than ever, impartial online information has become increasingly hard to isolate from the morass of spin. But accessing it is a crucial part of the process.

So, during the run-up to the election – and beyond if there’s a hung parliament and a snap re-election – Justis Publishing (*1)  is making its otherwise subscription-based Justis Parliament database free to the public.

The company has taken a two-pronged approach, offering the versatile service to:

• All public libraries in England, organized in part through its relationship with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) (*2) , for which uptake so far has been huge
• The public directly, when they visit www.justisparliament.com or www.justis.com/freeparliament

With an archive back to 1979 – further than any other electronic public repository of this material – Justis Parliament provides the most intuitive route and the only single-entry point into every element of Hansard and numerous other governmental archives. Justis Parliament gives users the chance to:

• See all MPs’ parliamentary questions and answers
• Keep an eye on Bills going through parliament
• Get the lowdown on Select Committees and debates
• Refine their searches like no other database, helping separate the relevant from the irrelevant

Justis Publishing’s Customer Liaison and Training Manager, David Finch, has intimate knowledge of the database and of its current users. On the free access his company is providing all members of the public in this critical pre-election period, he said: “Recent scandals have sparked much sharper scrutiny of MPs’ contributions, so being able to type in your – or any other – MP’s name into Justis Parliament to see how active they’ve been, and what sort of subjects they’ve been talking about should be very revealing. Open access to such a high-value service could well be the difference between some MPs getting returned or being shown the door by an informed pubic.”

For further information, please call +44 (0)20 7267 8989 or email press@justis.com.

*1 Justis Publishing Ltd has been publishing legal and parliamentary titles online and on CD-ROM since 1986 and in recent years has developed a citator to complement its own and third-party services. The company has secured a leading position in the sector, concentrating on United Kingdom, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union legal, official and business information. Justis Publishing’s customers come from legal and financial professions, government and the academic community in 84 countries worldwide.

*2 The Museums, Archives and Libraries Council is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Launched in April 2000 as the strategic body working with and for the museums, archives and libraries sector, tapping into the potential for collaboration between them, MLA replaced the Museums and Galleries Commission (MGC) and the Library and Information Commission (LIC).

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Justis Publishing Ltd has been publishing legal and parliamentary titles online and on CD-ROM since 1986 and in recent years has developed a citator to complement its own and third-party services. The company has secured a leading position in the sector, concentrating on United Kingdom, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union legal, official and business information. Justis Publishing’s customers come from legal and financial professions, government and the academic community in 84 countries worldwide.