This guide describes the major collections of British government publications available in Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania and the reference apparatus necessary to access them. It does not cover the census materials from the United Kingdom housed at Van Pelt or the thousands of separately cataloged documents. It should also be noted that there are substantial collections at the Biddle Law Library. The vast majority of requests for British government documents are for publications from the Parliament. Journals record the decisions made in each house.
Debates are the record of what is said in each house.
They are usually called Hansard after their early nineteenth century publisher. There is an extremely high overlap between the Lords' and the Commons' papers. Since about 1920 only those papers which are unique to Lords become part of the Lords' Sessional Papers. Indexes by session are with the debates. They are most complete for names of speakers and geographic names but not as detailed for thematic subjects.