If you are looking for recent Government Publications it is worth remembering that some material may be freely available on the web. If you have the name of a particular report, but are unsure whether the report is a Parliamentary or Non-Parliamentary publication, you can sometimes find the full text online by simply using a search engine, such as Google.
For example, a search on Google for the "Hutton Report" finds the website for the Hutton Inquiry, which includes the full text of the report online. For further help on using search engines look at the section in this tutorial dealing with searching the web.
Parliamentary Papers
For the online versions of Parliamentary Papers, a particularly important site is the United Kingdom Parliament website. This site will provide, for example:
- the full text of Bills before Parliament
- the full text of Hansard debates from 1988 onwards
- the full text of some General Committee debates from 1997 onwards (formerly known as Standing Committee debates)
- links to the full text of Acts of Parliament from 1988 onwards through Her Majesty's Stationery Office legislation web site
Non-parliamentary Papers
To find online versions of non-parliamentary papers you need to look at the websites of the particular government departments. A full list of government department websites can be found on the A-Z of Central Government page of the Directgov web site. Please note that not all non-parliamentary papers are available online.
For example, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (previously known as the Department for Education and Skills) website has a separate Publications page. This page provides links to the full text of some recent Department for Education and Skills publications, including the Government White Paper "21st century skills : realising our potential".