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UK Parliament Cookie Policy

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful, and reliable. When we deliver services online, this sometimes involves placing small files of information on your device. For example, on your computer or mobile phone. These small files are known as Cookies.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files which are placed on your device to help improve services for you and provide useful feedback to us as to how our services are being used.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through doing things like:

  • enabling a service to recognise your device so you do not have to give the same information several times during one task
  • recognising that you may already have given a username and password, so you do not need to do it for every web page
  • measuring how many people are using services, so we can ensure there’s enough capacity to make the services run smoothly.
  • analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people use our services so we can make them better.

You can learn how to manage cookies and find out more about them on Information Commissioner's Office website.

Our use of cookies

Essential cookies

Strictly necessary cookies are essential to 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.

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

  • 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.

Name: ASP.NET_SessionId
Purpose: to store the user's session ID to allow the site to recognise your movement around the site as being from one computer
Expires: when user exits browser

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: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: Two years

Name: _gid 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _gat_UA-15845045-1 
Purpose: Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_{property-id}.
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _gat_UA-15845045-20 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _gat_UA-15845045-32 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _gat_UA-15845045-35 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _utma 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: Two years

Name: _utmb 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes

Name: _utmc 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _utmt 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser

Name: _utmz 
Purpose: information about how the page was reached (eg directly or via a link, organic search or paid search
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: Six months

Name: __utmmobile 
Purpose: Used to distinguish users
Typical content: randomly generated number 
Expires: Two years 

Cloudflare

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

For example, if the visitor is in a coffee shop where there are infected machines, but the specific visitor's machine is trusted, the cookie allows us to identify that client and not challenge them again. It does not correspond to any user ID in your web application and does not store any personal information.

Name: _cfduid 
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: One year

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
We also use Application Insights to collect information about how you use our services. This helps us meet your needs and improve our website. All the information we collect is anonymous.

Name: ai_user
Purpose: This is used to distinguish users.
Expires:  One year

Name: ai_session
Purpose: This is used to group different actions into a single visit.
Expires: After 30 minutes.

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.