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UK Parliament Cookie Policy

Cookies are small text files which are placed on your device when you visit our website. Some cookies are essential for the site to work properly, whilst others can provide useful feedback by letting us see how our services are being used.

Essential cookies

Essential (or 'strictly necessary’) cookies allow you to move around our website and use its features and/or services. These cookies always need to be on as they help to make our website work. Essential cookies are a site’s basic form of memory, so they do things like remember if you are logged in to a part of the website.

You may be able to block these cookies by changing the preferences on your browser, but this can limit you from accessing our online services.

.NET

Name: ARRAffinitySameSite
Purpose: Used by Azure App Service to route requests to the correct application instance behind a load balancer (known as sticky sessions)
Expires: When user exits browser

Name: ARRAffinity
Purpose: Used by Azure App Service to route requests to the correct application instance behind a load balancer
Expires: When user exits browser

Application Insights

Name: ai_session
Purpose: Used by Microsoft Application Insights, an anonymous unique ID to identify a user's session
Expires: When user exits browser

Name: ai_user
Purpose: Used by Microsoft Application Insights, an anonymous unique ID to track returning users
Expires: 1 year

Cloudflare

In addition, we use cookies to support our Content Delivery Network, Cloudflare. These cookies are used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis.

Name: _cf_bm
Purpose: Bot management
Expires: After 30 minutes of continuous inactivity

Name: _cfuvid
Purpose: Rate limiting
Expires: When user exits browser

Name: cf_clearance
Purpose: Clearance Cookie stores the proof of challenge passed. It is used to no longer issue a challenge if present. It is required to reach an origin server.
Expires: After 30 minutes of continuous inactivity

Cookie banner preferences

Name: uk-parliament.cookie-policy
Purpose: Stores your cookie preferences
Expires: 1 year

Petitions

Name: _epets_session
Purpose: This keeps your information secure while you use the petitions service
Expires: When you close your browser

Name: signed_tokens
Purpose: Randomly generated references used to identify what links you’ve clicked to verify your email address
Expires: When you close your browser

Parliamentary Careers website

  • request_token: This may be set for users visiting *.wcn.co.uk domain.
  • wcn_status: This may be set for users visiting *.wcn.co.uk domain.
  • wcn_session: This may be set for users visiting *.tal.net domain.

Analytics and performance cookies

By understanding how people use the Parliament website, we can improve the navigation and content to make the site better and easier to use.

Performance cookies allow us to update websites to cater for user preferences and improve performance. Performance cookies may also be used to help manage website traffic during busy periods.

We will continue to update this list, but there may be some delay at times.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to gather data on the number of people accessing our site, where they are accessing from, what pages they visit, and what technology they are using. Google Analytics cannot identify you personally but does allow us to understand our users as a group. For example, by recording what browsers are being used.

Name: _ga
Purpose: Allows us to understand how users interact with our websites
Expires: 2 years

Name: _ga_<ID number>
Purpose: Allows us to understand how users interact with our websites
Expires: 2 years

Name: _gid
Purpose: Allows us to understand how users interact with our websites
Expires: 24 hours

Hotjar

We also run Hotjar to gather data on where users are clicking on pages, how they are viewing single and multiple pages, and to ask simple polls. These cookies record if a user has answered the question or hidden the notifier, so that it stays hidden on all pages.

Name: _hjDonePolls
Purpose: Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor completes a poll using the Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the same poll does not re-appear if it has already been filled in.
Expires: One year

Name: _hjMinimizedPolls

Purpose: Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor minimises a Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimised when the visitor navigates through the site
Expires: One year

Name: _hjDoneTestersWidgets
Purpose: Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor submits their information in the Recruit User Testers widget. It is used to ensure that the same form does not re-appear if it has already been filled in.
Expires: One year

Name: _hjMinimizedTestersWidgets
Purpose: Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor minimises a Recruit User Testers widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimised when the visitor navigates through the site.
Expires: One year

Name: _hjIncludedInSample
Purpose: Hotjar cookie. This session cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the sample which is used to generate funnels.
Expires: One year

Name: _hjSessionUser<site_id>
Purpose: Persists the Hotjar User ID which is unique to that site. Ensures data from subsequent visits to the same site are attributed to the same user ID.
Expires: One year

Name: hjSession{site_id}
Purpose: Holds current session data. Ensures subsequent requests in the session window are attributed to the same session.
Expires: 30 minutes duration, extended on user activity.

Name: _hjHasCachedUserAttributes
Purpose: Enables us to know whether the data set in _hjUserAttributes is up to date or not.
Expires: After session finished

Name: _hjUserAttributesHash
Purpose: Enables us to know when any User Attribute has changed and needs to be updated.
Expires: 2 minutes duration, extended every 30 seconds

Name: hjViewportId
Purpose: Stores user viewport details such as size and dimensions.
Expires: After session finished

Name: hjActiveViewportIds
Purpose: Stores an expirationTimestamp that is used to validate active viewports on script initialization.
Expires: After session finished

Shopify

We use Shopify to run our online shop. Shopify sets cookies to make the website function and improve your experience. Find out more about Shopify cookies.

See Tickets

We use See Tickets to run our ticket sales and visitor product. See Tickets uses cookies to improve the experience. Find out more about See Tickets cookies.

Cookies to support specific elements of the site

Some elements of the site use cookies to make them easier to use. These are:

Groovy Gecko vodapi.parliamentlive.tv
Name: systemid
Typical Content: To identify unique users for UKP’s analytics.
Expiry: One year

Kaltura vodplayer.parliamentlive.tv
Name: volumeControl1_volumeValue
Typical Content: This records the user’s volume preference.
Expiry: This will expire when the browser is closed.

Vualto
Name: Cookies_80709178-f878-4b24-9345-d928521c5c30
Typical Content: True or False value to indicate of the tracking cookies are enabled for the website.
Expiry: Six months

Race Against Chime  – a game in the Education section of the site – uses cookies if you have asked to connect the game to your Facebook account. This cookie stores your nickname, Facebook ID and your score.

Name: fbsetting_8a99ce37a8803de5e450ee9e0dbb9d20
Typical content: Information is only stored when a user connects with Facebook. This cookie stores your nickname, FacebookID and total score.
Expires: One day

This information is only stored when a user connects with Facebook and is stored in a database on the server. If you are playing the game without connecting to Facebook, no cookies are stored.

Name: SESS9ab115a12f3da60212f97f23466e5ec4
Typical content: Username and password are stored. It allows users to log in again during the same session without re-entering their details.
Expires: When user exits browser.

Marketing and third-party cookies

Cookies for marketing activity

We use tracking tags to collect information about your browsing habits on our site and measure performance of our marketing activity. This enables us to: 

  • make advertising, both on this site and other websites you subsequently visit, relevant to you and your interests 
  • limit the number of times those adverts are served to you 
  • track responses to our events 
  • learn more about the demographics of people engaging with our online advertising 
  • understand and optimise the effectiveness of our online advertising. 

The following tags use cookies:

  • AdWords - Conversion tracker: This tag fires when an online order is completed. 
  • FB Pixel base code: This cookie tracks all website pages viewed. 
  • FB purchase: This cookie tracks when an online order is completed. 
  • LinkedIn Insight tag: This cookie tracks website conversions.
  • Twitter conversion tracking tag: This cookie tracks website conversions. 
  • Google Signals

If you have enabled personalisation on your Google account, Google will be able to prepare data models and reports on website habits. These can show information such as what type of device you have clicked on an advertisement through or made a purchase with.

We intend to use Google Signals to better understand how users engage with our sites on different devices. This also helps us to understand the demographics and interests for those users who have accepted advertising personalisation.

When it is activated, Google Signals enables remarketing (also known as retargeting) campaigns to work across a person's multiple devices.
Users can opt-out of Google Analytics Advertising Features through

Cookies set by other websites through this site

We want to provide interesting and engaging content on our website. On some pages we embed media such as YouTube videos. The suppliers of these services may also set cookies on your device when you visit the pages where we have used this type of content. These are known as 'third-party' cookies. Parliament does not control how a third party uses their cookies.

You should check these third-party websites' privacy policies for more information about their cookies if you are concerned about this.

How to control and delete cookies

If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.

If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You will see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone, you will need to refer to your handset manual.

To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data on your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.