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House Of Commons Information Office
The House of Commons Enquiry Service, formerly known as the House of Commons Information Office, is a section within the Department of Information Services of the House of Commons. The chief role of the office is to provide the public with information regarding the work, history and membership of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. History The Office was set up in 1978 by Commons Librarian David Menhennet, following a recommendation by the Services Committee in their report ''Services for the Public'' (July 1977). The Committee stated that there was "a need for the House to ensure that the public is well informed about its work," and that a "small information office be created within the library...dealing with enquiries from the public." The Office was established on 1 June 1978 and was originally known as The Public Information Office. It evolved into a bigger section in order to cope with the volume of calls it received. By 1982 the Office was responding to more than ...
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House Of Commons Library
The House of Commons Library is the library and information resource of the lower house of the British Parliament. It was established in 1818, although its original 1828 construction was destroyed during the burning of Parliament in 1834. The library has adopted the phrase "Contributing to a well-informed democracy" as a summary of its mission statement. History The Library was established in 1818 and a purpose-designed library was built for it by Sir John Soane and completed in 1828. This building, along with much of the medieval Palace of Westminster, to which it was added, was destroyed by fire in 1834. In the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster by Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the Library was given four large rooms on the river front of the principal floor of the new palace, each 40 feet by 25 feet and some 20 ft high. This suite was fully opened by 1852, and two additional rooms added in the mid/late 1850s. One of these was to comp ...
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House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), members of Parliament (MPs), who are elected to represent United Kingdom constituencies, constituencies by the First-past-the-post voting, first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Dissolution of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the Acts of Union 1707, political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the Acts of Union 1800, political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and No ...
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David Menhennet
David Menhennet CB (4 December 1928 – 5 February 2016) was a British librarian. As librarian at the House of Commons Library from 1976 to 1991, he oversaw a period of modernisation and other improvements to the library, transforming it into a modern research facility. Life Early life and education Menhennet was born in Redruth, Cornwall, the son of William and Everill Menhennet. He attended Truro School on a scholarship and excelled in languages, going on to graduate with a first in French and German from Oriel College, Oxford. He then moved to Queen's College to study for a D.Phil. in 18th-century French literature. House of Commons career He became a clerk in the Commons Library in 1954. When given responsibility for the research area in 1964 he introduced a system of comprehensive daily briefings for MPs, and he was promoted to Deputy Librarian in 1967. When Speaker George Thomas appointed him 10th Librarian of the Commons Library in 1976, he began a process of modernisati ...
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Parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. The term is similar to the idea of a senate, synod or congress and is commonly used in countries that are current or former monarchies. Some contexts restrict the use of the word ''parliament'' to parliamentary systems, although it is also used to describe the legislature in some presidential systems (e.g., the Parliament of Ghana), even where it is not in the Legal name, official name. Historically, parliaments included various kinds of deliberative, consultative, and judicial assemblies. What is considered to be the first modern parliament, was the Cortes of León, held in the Kingdom of León in 1188. According to the UNESCO, the Decreta of Leon of 1188 is the oldest documentary manifestation ...
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History
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term ''history'' refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past. Historical research relies on Primary source, primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians strive to integrate the perspectives o ...
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House Of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. The leader of the majority party in the House of Commons by convention becomes the prime minister. Other parliaments have also had a lower house called the "House of Commons". History and naming The House of Commons of England, House of Commons of the Kingdom of England evolved from an undivided parliament to serve as the voice of the tax-paying subjects of the Ceremonial counties of England, counties and the borough constituency, boroughs. Knight of the shire, Knights of the shire, elected from each county, were usually landowners, while the borough members were often from the merchant classes. These members represented subjects of the Crown who were not Lords Temporal or Spiritual, who themselves sat in the House of Lords. ...
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