Question

To ask The Senior Deputy Speaker, further to the Written Answer by Lord Gardiner of Kimble on 6 January (HL13198), who initiated the preparation of the paper which was presented to the Services Committee in May 2025 regarding the proposal to change the printed version of the House of Lords Official Report from a serif to a sans-serif typeface.

The Senior Deputy Speaker has asked me, as Chair of the Services Committee, to respond on his behalf. Hansard initiated the paper proposing changes to the design of the printed version in consideration of contemporary accessibility standards. The existing design does not conform to contemporary accessibility standards in several ways. The justified layout is generally regarded as more difficult for visually impaired and dyslexic people to follow, and the serif text requires more effort to read than non-serif fonts. This work is being done in tandem with House of Commons Hansard, with which post-production processes are shared, so a divergence of approach would be likely to increase costs.