It’s quite odd what you can find when looking for something else, such as a site which sells sheepskin parchment and happens to mention:
“It is a legal requirement that all Acts of Parliament are still recorded on this material.“
Which seemed unlikely to me what with this being the twentfirst century and all, so I did a bit of searching, and what do you know it’s true:
Now at a new law a day everyday since they came into power that’s an awful lot of laws, and thus an awful lot of sheep, and that parchment isn’t cheap. Which makes me wonder several things:
- Given the state they’ve reduced British sheep farming to where are they getting all those sheep skins from?
- Has anyone told the greens and if so why aren’t they objecting, especially the vegans?
- Does this explain the real reason for the various sheep culls that have occurred under New Labour?
I think I may have to find out how to make a suitable FOI request.
In 2000 there was a suggestion to discontinue the use of vellum for statutes. You’d have to search the Hansard archives, but I know it was in connection with the then member for Milton Keynes North East, Brian White, who was the Labour MP for that constituency from 1997 – 2005.
IIRC, White argued against the discontinuation of vellum archive copies on the grounds that it was a niche industry here. There are good archive reasons, too. Vellum is regarded as nearly permanent, so long as it doesn’t get wet or on fire, leading to fewer arguments about the source document.
There is the ‘second half’ of this story at Hansard
HC Deb 20 January 2000 vol 342 cc1094-100, which isn’t very exciting but points to the original issue:
” 7.52 pm
§ The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Graham Stringer)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White) on securing this important debate. It is highly appropriate that my hon. Friend, who did so much to secure the future of the material on which Acts of Parliament are written and stored, should turn his considerable energies and intelligence to considering what is written on the vellum.”
A summary is on Brian White’s own website.
“In 2000 it was proposed to stop printing Acts of Parliament on vellum and instead put them on CD-ROM’s. As a technologist he was in favour of using new technology but, as Brian pointed out “given the company which produced vellum was in Newport Pagnell and was the only one left in this country I could not allow its principal income stream to disappear particularly as the ability of the company to provide parchment repairs for our ancient manuscripts in museums and libraries was based on the profitability of this contract”. As a result of campaigning against the combined weight of the Government and Opposition frontbench plus the whole Liberal Democrat Party he was able to persuade enough MPs to rebel to defeat them and keep this industry in existence.”
http://www.brianwhite.org.uk/Parliamentary.htm
His summary of career is worth reading for the discomfort; he is someone who has frequently disagreed with his party, and on very good grounds, but then folded and voted with them anyway which really cannot be cited as ‘integrity’.
Here are the vellum producers: Cowley at Newport Pagnell
http://www.sacsrepackaging.com/parchment.html
They say they use English sheepskin. They also have a leather shop.
Coo, I’m much impressed with your research skills. I must get the hang of Hansard. I knew that parchment is a fantastic archival material so using it seemed reasonable – though surprised it survived any number of cost cutting exercises. But it’s still a hell of a lot of sheep parliament must have gone through.
Mr White’s web site is odd first page is all first person then everything else is third person.
Shame that Cowley don’t seem to actually sell parchment in their leather shop.