House Office
The House Office’s role is to provide support for the sittings of the House and the committee of the whole House. This support involves the provision of advice on parliamentary procedure to the Speaker, other presiding officers, members of Parliament, and others involved in the parliamentary process.
Whenever the House is sitting, the Clerk of the House, or another senior member of staff, is present at the Table of the House to provide advice and record the transaction of business by the House. Although Clerks-at-the-Table may be drawn from any area of the Office of the Clerk, they work under the auspices of the House Office in this capacity.
Certain statutory functions are carried out in the House Office, including arrangements for the storage and destruction of ballot papers following general elections.
The House Office is led by the Clerk-Assistant (House) and is divided into two relatively small business teams: the Table Office, and the Bills Office.
Table Office
The Table Office provides procedural support and legislative services. Staff are available to advise members on House procedures. They scrutinise written questions, petitions, and motions lodged each sitting day to ensure they comply with the Standing Orders. Secretarial services are provided to the Business Committee, which is chaired by the Speaker and is responsible for organising House business.
A critical function of the Table Office is to certify that bills reprinted during their passage to show amendments accurately reflect the decisions of the House and its committees, and that bills presented for Royal assent are in the form in which they were passed by the House. Staff scrutinise bills for introduction to ensure they are in the proper form. They also provide advice to members on proposed amendments to bills, and arrange to have members’ amendments published on Supplementary Order Papers.
Responsibility for the supply of members’ bills, private bills, and local bills for the House lies with the member in charge of the bill. The Table Office fulfils this responsibility on behalf of members under a service-level agreement with the Parliamentary Counsel Office. It also administers the ballot for members’ bill places on the Order Paper. (The supply of Government bills is the responsibility of the Parliamentary Counsel Office on behalf of Ministers.)
Records of the House’s transactions are maintained and published by the Table Office. Notes made by the Clerks-at-the-Table form the basis of the Journals of the House, the official record of parliamentary business transacted. Each week the Parliamentary Bulletin is published, recording business transacted in the House and committees and the progress of bills. This information is also published to the parliamentary website.
Bills Office
The Bills Office provides an information service by making available the bills and other information that members need in order to perform their legislative and scrutiny functions in the House. Papers presented to the House are circulated and, where this is ordered by the House, published to the parliamentary website. An Order Paper and copies of the questions for oral answer are made available for every sitting of the House.
The Bills Office also maintains the electronic questions for written answer system, which processes some 20,000 questions and replies each year. The questions for written answer lodged daily are scrutinised and published to the parliamentary website. Replies are received and published. A parliamentary printing agreement, which relates to non-legislative parliamentary printing, provides for the publishing and distribution of parliamentary publications.
