UK Parliament Written Questions API
Browse all Parliament Uk APIsIdentity AuthDirectory Servicesnone7 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Query parliamentary written questions, ministerial answers, and written statements across 7 endpoints.
Use for: Find all written questions asked to the Home Office, What written questions has this MP asked recently?, Retrieve the minister's answer to a specific question, List unanswered written questions from last month
Not supported: Covers parliamentary written questions, ministerial written answers, and written ministerial statements. Does not include oral questions, debate transcripts, or committee evidence - use Oral Questions, Hansard, or Committee APIs for those.
Jentic publishes the only agent-ready OpenAPI specification for the UK Parliament Written Questions API, keeping it validated and up to date. The API exposes parliamentary written questions and ministerial written answers, along with written ministerial statements, allowing tracking of ministerial accountability and parliamentary scrutiny across government departments. It powers research platforms, political monitoring tools, and accountability systems analyzing ministerial responses.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the UK Parliament Written Questions API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the UK Parliament Written Questions API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
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Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fparliament.uk%2Fwrittenquestions" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fparliament.uk%2Fwrittenquestions" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with UK Parliament Written Questions API.
Search written questions by keyword, MP, or department
Retrieve ministerial written answers by question ID
List written questions by answering body or date range
Access written ministerial statements by department or date
Filter questions by answered or unanswered status
Track question-to-answer timelines and response delays
Query historical written questions by parliamentary session
Use Cases
Patterns agents use UK Parliament Written Questions API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Ministerial Accountability Tracking
Monitor written questions tabled to government departments and track ministerial response times. GET /api/writtenquestions/questions returns all written questions with filtering by answering body, status, and date. Cross-reference with GET /api/writtenquestions/questions/{id} to retrieve full question text and ministerial answers. Essential for parliamentary researchers tracking government accountability.
GET /api/writtenquestions/questions?answeringBody=Home Office&answered=false to list unanswered Home Office questions
Policy Research and Analysis
Search written questions by keyword or topic to research government policy positions and ministerial statements on specific issues. The API supports full-text search across question and answer text, enabling researchers to track how government policy evolves through written parliamentary responses.
GET /api/writtenquestions/questions?search=climate&answered=true to retrieve all answered questions mentioning climate
Written Ministerial Statements
Access written ministerial statements published by government departments via GET /api/writtenministrialstatements. These statements provide official government announcements and policy positions outside of oral parliamentary proceedings. Filter by department and date to track departmental communications.
GET /api/writtenministrialstatements?department=Treasury&date=2026-06-01 to retrieve Treasury statements from June 2026
AI-Powered Parliamentary Research via Jentic
An AI agent researching UK government policy can search written questions by topic or minister, track response times, and retrieve ministerial answers through Jentic without managing pagination or complex filtering. Jentic resolves intents like 'find housing questions' to the correct Written Questions API endpoints.
Search Jentic for 'find written questions by department', load GET /api/writtenquestions/questions schema, and execute
Key Endpoints
7 endpoints — jentic publishes the only agent-ready openapi specification for the uk parliament written questions api, keeping it validated and up to date.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions
List or search written questions with filtering
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions/{id}
Retrieve a specific written question and its answer
GET
/api/writtenministrialstatements
List written ministerial statements
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions/answeredbetween
Query questions answered within a date range
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions
List or search written questions with filtering
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions/{id}
Retrieve a specific written question and its answer
GET
/api/writtenministrialstatements
List written ministerial statements
GET
/api/writtenquestions/questions/answeredbetween
Query questions answered within a date range
Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the UK Parliament Written Questions API by hand means learning its question and statement conventions, building date-range and pagination handling, and parsing answer text yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Written Questions API from the API Directory, and your agent calls it with no credential to manage since it is open-access.
Permission scoping
This API is read-only over public written-question data, so you limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as listing questions, fetching one question by id, or querying answers within a date range. Every operation is a GET, so nothing it can call writes or changes parliamentary records.
Credential isolation
The Written Questions API is open-access and needs no credential, so there is no key to store. If you later front it with a gateway token, that token is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance, injected at execution time, and never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'find written questions on housing' or 'list questions answered between two dates', and Jentic returns the matching Written Questions operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using UK Parliament Written Questions API through Jentic.
What is the difference between oral and written questions?
Written questions are submitted to ministers for written answers published in Hansard, allowing detailed information requests. Oral questions are answered verbally in the chamber. This API covers written questions and answers; use the Oral Questions API for questions answered in chamber.
Can I filter questions by government department?
Yes. Use GET /api/writtenquestions/questions with the answeringBody parameter to filter by the government department responsible for answering. This is essential for tracking scrutiny of specific departments or policy areas.
How do I find unanswered questions?
Use the answered=false filter in GET /api/writtenquestions/questions to retrieve questions that have been tabled but not yet answered by ministers. This helps track outstanding accountability requests and ministerial response times.
Can I search the content of questions and answers?
Yes. Use the search parameter in GET /api/writtenquestions/questions to perform keyword searches across question and answer text. This enables topic-based research into government policy positions expressed through ministerial answers.
Is authentication required for this API?
No. The UK Parliament Written Questions API is a public API with no authentication required. It provides open access to parliamentary questions and ministerial answers for research and accountability monitoring.
Where does Jentic's OpenAPI spec for this API come from?
Jentic imports and validates the official Swagger spec published by UK Parliament at https://writtenquestions-api.parliament.uk/swagger/v1/swagger.json, converts it to OpenAPI 3.0.3, and keeps it updated so AI agents and developers can call the API via structured tooling.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the UK Parliament Written Questions API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which of this API's operations the agent can call, so you can allow only what a task needs, such as listing or searching written questions, fetching a single question and its answer by id, or querying questions answered within a date range. Every operation on this API is a read-only GET, so nothing the agent calls can write to or change parliamentary records. You can also restrict it to the written ministerial statements endpoint alone if that is all a given agent should reach.
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