§ Mr. GapesTo ask the Chairman of the Information Committee what plans he has to increase the value and sales of the parliamentary on-line information system by(a) extending the coverage of parliamentary questions by allowing political party to be specified in the search terms and (b) developing the system to allow for free text on-line searching of Hansard.
§ Mr. Gary WallerAccess by users outside Parliament to the parliamentary on-line information system (POLIS) is via a commercial service provider who markets it on behalf of the House. The House receives income in the form of royalties. The ability to search the databases by political party is not available on the public version of POLIS and there are no immediate plans to include it. The full text ofHansard is available for purchase on CD-ROM disk, published by HMSO and Chadwyck Healey but is not available on the POLIS public user service.
I will arrange for the hon. Member's question to be drawn to the attention of the company which will be providing the POLIS 3 public user service.