This is the third instalment of a series of blogs about how the privilege in parliamentary publication eventually came to be defined in the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840. Part I can be read at Privilege, Libel and the long road to Stockdale v. Hansard, Part I: from Strode’s Case to Article IX; Part II is at Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part II: from Wilkes to 1835. This instalment deals with what happened after the Reform Act of 1832.
The publication resolution of 1835
The 1835 decision of the House of Commons that it would routinely publish the reports and returns that were formally presented to it would have a huge impact on the issue of parliamentary privilege. It was of a piece with other gestures of openness on the part of the post-Reform Parliament, most notably the decision to publish division lists, dealt with in this blog by…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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