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jblumenau / CommonsSpeech

A Database of Speeches Made in the UK House of Commons
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The House of Commons Speech Database, 1979 – 2019

Overview

This repository holds links to and explanations of a database of speeches delivered in the UK House of Commons between 3rd May 1979 and 5th November 2019. This data was compiled as an output of ESRC grant number ES/N016297/1, which was for a project entitled “Measuring Political Debate: Responsiveness, Influence, and Rhetoric in Parliamentary Texts”.

The dataset consists of speeches made in the UK House of Commons between 1979 and 2019. The full data includes over 2 million individual utterances, and you can download the data as a series of yearly .csv files from UK data services permanent hosting site. The data is available at this page.

Data sources

Codebook

Each file in the data include all speeches made in the House of Commons in the space of a calandar year. In each file, the following variables are included:

Variable Name Description
person_id The MP’s unique identifier (corresponds to IDs used in TheyWorkForYou)
mnis_person_id An alternative MP identifier (corresponds to IDs used in the Members Name Information Service)
member_id A unique identifier for each MP’s term in parliament (may be multiple member_ids for each person_id)
name Name of the MP
constituency Constituency of the MP
entered_house Date on which the MP entered the House of Commons
left_house Date on which the MP left the House of Commons
date_of_birth Birthday of the MP
age_years Age of the MP in years
gender Gender of the MP
days_in_house Number of days that the MP had been an MP at the time of giving the speech
party Party of the MP
party_short Party of the MP (recoded)
government_party_mp Indicator for whether the MP was a member of a current governing party
epobject_id Unique identifier for speech
section_id Debate identifier
subsection_id Sub-debate identifier
hpos Position in debate of speech
hdate Date of speech
body Text of speech
parent Title of debate
question_time Indicator for whether the debate is a Question Time session
n_words Number of words in speech
government_role_X Whether the MP currently holds a government role (and whether the role requires attending cabinet/is paid or unpaid). MPs sometimes hold more than one role, hence the indexing.
attends_cabinet Indicator for whether an MP currently holds a government role that requires them to attend cabinet
government_ministerial_position_X Name of the government role held by the MP indicated in government_role_X.
holds_government_position Indicator for whether an MP currently holds any government role
opposition_role_X Whether the MP currently holds an opposition role (and whether the role requires attending shadow cabinet/is paid or unpaid). MPs sometimes hold more than one role, hence the indexing
opposition_ministerial_position_X Name of the opposition role held by the MP indicated in opposition_role_X.
holds_opposition_position Indicator for whether an MP currently holds any opposition role
committee_name_X Name of the committee (if any) on which the MP currently serves. MPs sometimes hold more than one committee position, hence the indexing.
committee_type_X Type of committee indicated in committee_name_X
has_committee_assignment Indicator for whether an MP currently holds any committee assignment
committee_chair_nameX Name of the committee (if any) on which the MP is currently Chair. MPs sometimes Chair more than one committee, hence the indexing.
committee_chair_type_X Type of the committee indicated in committee_chair_nameX
is_committee_chair Indicator for whether the MP is currently Chair of a committee
speaker_role The type of speaker role held by an MP (if any)
is_speaker Indicator for whether the MP currently holds one of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker roles in the Commons
votes_XXX The number of votes won by the relevant party at the last election in the relevant MP’s constituency (does not include by-election results)
pct_XXX The percentage of the vote won by the relevant party at the last election in the relevant MP’s constituency (does not include by-election results)