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The Parliament had long been a highly secretive body. The official record of the actions of the House were publicly available, but there was no such record of debates. The publication of remarks made in the House became a breach of Parliamentary privilege, punishable by the two Houses. As more people became interested in parliamentary debates, more individuals published unofficial accounts of parliamentary debates. Editors were at worst subjected to fines. Several editors used the device of veiling parliamentary debates as debates of ficticious societies or bodies. The names under which parliamentary debates were published include Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society and Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia.
In 1771, Parliament ceased to punish the publishing of its debates, partly due to the campaigns of John Wilkes on the behalf of free speech. Thereafter, the first attempt to methodically record the proceedings of Parliament was made by William Cobbett in 1802 when he began publishing Parliamentary Debates as a supplement to his Political Register. The name of the publication comes from Thomas Curson Hansard, the printer used by Cobbett from 1809 onwards. In 1812, due to financial reasons, Cobbett sold the Debates to Hansard. It became an official document of the United Kingdom parliament in 1909.
The Hansard is not a verbatim account of debates in Parliament. It seeks to eliminate "repetitions and redundancies." One instance of such an eliminated redundancy involves the calling of members in the House of Commons. In that House, the Speaker must call on a member by name before that member may speak; the Hansard, however, makes no mention of the recognition accorded by the Speaker. Also, the Hansard sometimes adds extraneous material to make the remarks less ambiguous. For example, though members refer to each other as "the Honourable Member for Constituency Name" rather than by name, Hansard adds, in parantheses, the name of the member being referred to.
Also published in the Hansard are written answers made by Government ministers in response to questions formally posed by members. Furthermore, the proceedings and debates in committee are also published.
The term Hansard is also used for the proceedings of the Parliament of Canada and Parliament of Australia.