For those interested in the full text backfile from Hansard, the Official Report of debates in Parliament (both the House of Commons and House of Lords) this is now included in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) from 1803 to 2005.
The publicly available files created by the Hansard Digitisation Project (led by the Directorate of Information Services of the House of Commons and the Library of the House of Lords) are the source for this material.
There is a freely available version of Hansard. However, this significant enhancement in HCPP enables the sessional papers of the House of Commons to be searched alongside Hansard from one interface. Also, researchers can use Hansard alongside HCPP to expand their understanding of the background and influences on key Acts of Parliament throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Hansard archive covering the post-2005 period is available at online.
As well as browsing Hansard, you can also browse by MP’s names which then provide links to their contributions in relevant sessions. Now wouldn’t it be nice if this linked to biographical sources on MPs…
