Get Member Debates

Previous value: -"Full citable attribution string, e.g. 'The Minister of State, DESNZ (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)'. Includes role-at-time of contribution for ministerial interventions."New value: +"Full citable attribution string, verbatim from Hansard, e.g. 'The Minister of State, DESNZ (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)' or 'Lord Pannick (CB)'. This is the authoritative citation text — quote it as-is rather than reconstructing it from other fields."

Previous value: -"Constituency (Commons only; None for Lords)"New value: +"Constituency (Commons only; None for Lords). Not currently populated from AttributedTo — see `party`'s note on why positional parsing of that string is unsafe; use parliament_find_member for authoritative constituency."

Previous value: -"Members API integer ID. Use as {member_id} in hansard://member/{member_id}/biography for the member's role history."New value: +"Members API integer ID. Use as {member_id} in hansard://member/{member_id}/biography for the member's role history. None for a collective or otherwise unresolved attribution (e.g. 'Hon. Members') — Hansard itself has no member to identify there."

Added value: +[
+  {
+    "type": "string"
+  },
+  {
+    "type": "null"
+  }
+]

Added value: +null

Previous value: -"Name of the contributing member (MemberName)"New value: +"Authoritative display name of the contributing member — populated ONLY when the source endpoint itself supplies a real name field, never derived by parsing `attributed_to`. Populated from Hansard's MemberName field on the search endpoints (parliament_search_hansard, parliament_member_debates). ALWAYS None from parliament_get_debate_contributions (backed by /debates/Debate/{ext}.json), because DebateItem has no MemberName field at all — only `AttributedTo` (a citation-display string) and `member_id`. AttributedTo's shape varies unpredictably (own name first, hereditary-title styling, ministerial office, chair/speaker role, annotations, collective labels — e.g. 'Lord Pannick (CB)' vs 'The Earl of Devon (CB)' vs 'Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)' vs 'Madam Deputy Speaker' alone, all verified live) with no positional rule that reliably recovers the person's name across all of them — two earlier attempts ('use the last parenthesis', then 'unless it starts with `The `') were each falsified by a real, live counterexample. `attributed_to` is preserved in full instead of being decomposed into a guess. Resolve authoritative identity via `member_id` and parliament_find_member when this is None."

Removed value: -"string"

Previous value: -"Political party affiliation parsed from the trailing '(Party)' suffix in AttributedTo"New value: +"ALWAYS None. Hansard's AttributedTo is a citation-display string Hansard composes for readability, not structured party data — neither the search-contributions nor the debate-items schema declares a Party field, and the parenthesised text varies by convention (constituency, party, office, 'Maiden Speech', a virtual-attendance marker, or nothing at all) in ways that cannot be told apart by position alone. Guessing a party from it previously produced fabricated values for ministers/officeholders (e.g. party='Lucy Powell' for 'The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)'). For a member's authoritative party, resolve `member_id` via parliament_find_member against the Members API's structured latestParty field."

Previous value: -[
-  "member_name",
-  "attributed_to",
-  "date",
-  "debate_title",
-  "debate_id",
-  "debate_ext_id",
-  "contribution_ext_id",
-  "chamber_section",
-  "house",
-  "text",
-  "url"
-]New value: +[
+  "attributed_to",
+  "date",
+  "debate_title",
+  "debate_id",
+  "debate_ext_id",
+  "contribution_ext_id",
+  "chamber_section",
+  "house",
+  "text",
+  "url"
+]

Added value: +{
+  "default": 20,
+  "description": "Maximum contributions to return. Default 20.",
+  "maximum": 100,
+  "minimum": 1,
+  "type": "integer"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Parliament Members API integer ID. Obtain from parliament_find_member.",
+  "minimum": 1,
+  "type": "integer"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "default": 0,
+  "description": "Number of contributions to skip before this page. Default 0. Re-call with offset=offset+returned while has_more is true.",
+  "maximum": 2000,
+  "minimum": 0,
+  "type": "integer"
+}

Removed value: -{
-  "additionalProperties": false,
-  "description": "MemberDebatesInput with member_id and optional topic filter.",
-  "properties": {
-    "limit": {
-      "default": 20,
-      "description": "Maximum contributions to return. Default 20.",
-      "maximum": 100,
-      "minimum": 1,
-      "type": "integer"
-    },
-    "member_id": {
-      "description": "Parliament Members API integer ID. Obtain from parliament_find_member.",
-      "minimum": 1,
-      "type": "integer"
-    },
-    "offset": {
-      "default": 0,
-      "description": "Number of contributions to skip before this page. Default 0. Re-call with offset=offset+returned while has_more is true.",
-      "maximum": 2000,
-      "minimum": 0,
-      "type": "integer"
-    },
-    "topic": {
-      "anyOf": [
-        {
-          "type": "string"
-        },
-        {
-          "type": "null"
-        }
-      ],
-      "default": null,
-      "description": "Optional phrase to find in THIS member's contribution text bodies. Hansard searches the words the member actually said, NOT the topic or title of the debate. Pass tokens this member would have spoken — distinctive arguments ('disproportionate sanction'), statutory references ('section 21'), or motion numbers ('Motion C1') — not the bill's name (members rarely say e.g. 'Renters' Rights Bill' verbatim in their speeches). If you want 'every contribution this member made in a specific debate' regardless of words used, find the debate_ext_id then use parliament_get_debate_contributions(debate_ext_id, member_id=...)."
-    }
-  },
-  "required": [
-    "member_id"
-  ],
-  "type": "object"
-}

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "string"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "Optional phrase to find in THIS member's contribution text bodies. Hansard searches the words the member actually said, NOT the topic or title of the debate. Pass tokens this member would have spoken — distinctive arguments ('disproportionate sanction'), statutory references ('section 21'), or motion numbers ('Motion C1') — not the bill's name (members rarely say e.g. 'Renters\\' Rights Bill' verbatim in their speeches). If you want 'every contribution this member made in a specific debate' regardless of words used, find the debate_ext_id then use parliament_get_debate_contributions(debate_ext_id, member_id=...)."
+}

Previous value: -[
-  "params"
-]New value: +[
+  "member_id"
+]

Previous value: -"Optional phrase to filter this member's contributions by topic, e.g. 'housing benefit' or 'net zero'. Searched as an exact phrase."New value: +"Optional phrase to find in THIS member's contribution text bodies. Hansard searches the words the member actually said, NOT the topic or title of the debate. Pass tokens this member would have spoken — distinctive arguments ('disproportionate sanction'), statutory references ('section 21'), or motion numbers ('Motion C1') — not the bill's name (members rarely say e.g. 'Renters' Rights Bill' verbatim in their speeches). If you want 'every contribution this member made in a specific debate' regardless of words used, find the debate_ext_id then use parliament_get_debate_contributions(debate_ext_id, member_id=...)."

Previous value: -"A single Hansard debate contribution."New value: +"A single Hansard debate contribution with citation-grade metadata.\n\nField provenance maps to the upstream hansard-api.parliament.uk\n`Contributions[i]` payload, so callers can footnote a contribution\nwithout re-querying."

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Full citable attribution string, e.g. 'The Minister of State, DESNZ (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)'. Includes role-at-time of contribution for ministerial interventions.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Hansard section bucket (Section): 'Commons Chamber', 'Lords Chamber', 'Westminster Hall', 'Written Answers', 'Written Statements'.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "The last Hansard column number this contribution spans, e.g. when a long speech runs across columns 200–203. Equal to `column_start` for short contributions. Same population semantics as `column_start`."
+}

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "string"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "Hansard internal page-marker code from HansardSection (e.g. 'BE-BG1', 'AA-AD'). NOT the citable column number that appears in an OSCOLA footnote — see `column_start` / `column_end` for those, which are only available when reading the contribution via hansard://debate/{debate_ext_id}/contribution/{contribution_ext_id}. From parliament_search_hansard, only this page-marker is exposed."
+}

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "The citable Hansard column number where this contribution begins, e.g. 200, 1162. Extracted from `data-column-number` markers in the contribution HTML. Populated only when reading via the contribution resource — `parliament_search_hansard` returns this as None because Hansard's /search.json strips the column markers. To get the real column number for a search hit, read hansard://debate/{debate_ext_id}/contribution/{contribution_ext_id}."
+}

Added value: +{
+  "description": "ContributionExtId GUID — stable citation key. Use as {contribution_ext_id} in hansard://debate/{debate_ext_id}/contribution/{contribution_ext_id}.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

Previous value: -"Date the contribution was made"New value: +"Date the contribution was made (SittingDate)"

Added value: +{
+  "description": "DebateSectionExtId GUID. Use as {debate_ext_id} in hansard://debate/{debate_ext_id}/header.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Integer DebateSectionId — internal Hansard identifier",
+  "type": "integer"
+}

Previous value: -"Title of the debate or question"New value: +"Title of the debate or question (DebateSection)"

Added value: +{
+  "description": "House of Parliament (House)",
+  "enum": [
+    "Commons",
+    "Lords"
+  ],
+  "type": "string"
+}

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "Members API integer ID. Use as {member_id} in hansard://member/{member_id}/biography for the member's role history."
+}

Previous value: -"Name of the contributing member"New value: +"Name of the contributing member (MemberName)"

Previous value: -"Political party affiliation"New value: +"Political party affiliation parsed from the trailing '(Party)' suffix in AttributedTo"

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "default": null,
+  "description": "Upstream relevance score (Rank). Higher = more relevant to the query."
+}

Removed value: -{
-  "description": "Hansard section (e.g. 'Commons Chamber', 'Written Answers')",
-  "type": "string"
-}

Previous value: -"Full text of the contribution (capped at 3000 characters)"New value: +"Contribution text (capped per max_text_chars on the input; default 3000). Source: ContributionTextFull when text_mode='full', ContributionText preview otherwise."

Previous value: -"Direct Hansard URL to this contribution"New value: +"Public hansard.parliament.uk URL for this contribution (synthesised from House/Date/DebateSectionExtId/ContributionExtId)."

Previous value: -[
-  "member_name",
-  "date",
-  "debate_title",
-  "section",
-  "text",
-  "url"
-]New value: +[
+  "member_name",
+  "attributed_to",
+  "date",
+  "debate_title",
+  "debate_id",
+  "debate_ext_id",
+  "contribution_ext_id",
+  "chamber_section",
+  "house",
+  "text",
+  "url"
+]