sparql

name

sparql

description

Query the UK Parliament public SPARQL 1.1 endpoint at api.parliament.uk/sparql. Integrated graph (DDP) covering people, parties, governments, houses, constituencies, parliamentary periods, incumbencies, formal-body memberships, the procedural meta-layer (procedures / steps / routes / work packages), treaties, statutory instruments, written questions and answers, ePetitions, and historical Acts. Use whenever a question joins across more than one of those topics — SPARQL is the only place where everything is linked by URI. Not in DDP: Bills, Hansard contributions, Divisions / votes, Elections / candidates / results, Early Day Motions, the Register of Members' Financial Interests, Erskine May, committee evidence / inquiries — those require their dedicated REST APIs.

UK Parliament SPARQL endpoint

Endpoint: https://api.parliament.uk/sparql

Method: GET or POST with query=<urlencoded SPARQL>. Result formats via Accept:

Accept	Format
application/sparql-results+json	JSON results (recommended)
application/sparql-results+xml	SRX
text/csv	CSV
text/tab-separated-values	TSV
text/turtle	for CONSTRUCT / DESCRIBE
application/rdf+xml	for CONSTRUCT / DESCRIBE

A bare GET to the endpoint without a query returns 404. You must include ?query=... or POST.

What it covers (and what it doesn't)

The endpoint fronts the DDP graph — ~7.5M asserted statements, inference off, ~194 classes in the parl: schema. Empirically probed instance populations 2026-05-24:

Rich coverage (the headline SPARQL surface)

Domain	Key classes (instance counts)
People & memberships	Person (5,460), Member (5,425), Party (395), ConstituencyGroup (4,722), SeatIncumbency (12,351), PartyMembership (9,846), FormalBodyMembership (11,540), FormalBody (399), GovernmentIncumbency (3,931), OppositionIncumbency (3,328), GovernmentOrganisation (54), ContactPoint (4,604), WebLink (41,504)
Procedure meta-layer	Procedure (63), ProcedureStep (4,602), ProcedureRoute (7,991), WorkPackage (7,719), BusinessItem (87,666), Approval (28,515), Rejection (83,865)
Statutory instruments	StatutoryInstrumentPaper (6,932), MadeStatutoryInstrumentPaper (4,781), ProposedNegativeStatutoryInstrumentPaper (424), Laying (14,695), LaidThing (7,710), LayingBody (34)
Treaties	Treaty (323; matches REST /Treaty/Search totalResults exactly — same IRIs)
Questions & answers	Question (192,296), WrittenAnswer (132,537), WrittenAnswerExpectation (190,085), AnsweringBody (58), AnsweringBodyAllocation (165,132), CorrectingAnswer (958)
ePetitions	EPetition (101,254 — 28k approved, 73k rejected), Moderation (112,380), ThresholdAttainment (103,068), LocatedSignatureCount (80,247)
Acts of Parliament	ActOfParliament (17,612 historical)

Absent from DDP — but most are reachable via LDA

api.parliament.uk/sparql is one of three parliamentary RDF surfaces, and the modern DDP graph is the narrowest of them. Topics that aren't in DDP are usually still reachable as Linked Data via the legacy LDA (lda.data.parliament.uk) on a per-dataset URL — see linked-data-api. LDA has no federated SPARQL endpoint; each dataset is its own little graph queried via URL parameters.

Topic	DDP SPARQL	LDA RDF	Modern REST
Bills	absent (6 PublicBillWork)	lda.../bills.json populated	bills-api.parliament.uk
Hansard contributions	absent (Debate = ePetition debates only)	lda.../hansardcommons{proceedings,documents} + lords equivalents	hansard-api.parliament.uk
Divisions / votes	absent (no Division class)	lda.../commonsdivisions, lda.../lordsdivisions (sparse — per-member votes not populated)	commonsvotes-api, lordsvotes-api
Elections / candidates / results	classes defined, 0 instances	lda.../elections, lda.../electionresults	psephology (Postgres)
Parliament Thesaurus (SKOS)	absent (Concept 0 instances)	lda.../terms with broader/exactMatch	—
Research / briefing papers	absent	lda.../briefingpapers, lda.../researchbriefings	—
Committee typology	populated (SelectCommittee 174, FormalBody 399)	—	committees-api (also has evidence / inquiries)
Register of Members' Financial Interests	not modelled anywhere as RDF	—	interests-api, members-api/.../RegisteredInterests
Early Day Motions	not modelled anywhere as RDF	—	covered by oral-questions-and-edms
Erskine May text	not modelled anywhere as RDF	—	scraped HTML at erskinemay.parliament.uk
APPGs	not modelled anywhere as RDF	—	scraped via appg skill
Committee evidence / inquiries / publications	not modelled anywhere as RDF	—	committees-api

So the truly RDF-absent set (no SPARQL surface anywhere, modern or legacy) is small: RMFI, EDMs, Erskine May, APPGs, and committee evidence / inquiries. Everything else is reachable as RDF — just sometimes only via LDA's per-URL fetch rather than the DDP SPARQL endpoint.

What's genuinely unique to DDP SPARQL (not in MNIS, REST, or LDA)

• Multi-typing as a schema convention — a Person carries 16–19 simultaneous types. Schema property only; no data is unique.
• Wikidata bridge (parl:wikidataThingHasEquivalentWikidataResource on 1,894 People). Not in MNIS, not in the Members API; SPARQL-only.
• ProcedureRoute graph as a typed entity — 7,991 typed edges between procedural steps. The REST APIs expose individual stages but not the graph of legal transitions between them.
• Cross-cutting joins pre-made — e.g. "every person who was a Minister AND on a Select Committee in 2024" is one SPARQL query; in REST it's a join across two APIs by member id.

Note: the cross-system identifier bridges (parl:mnisId, parl:pimsId, parl:dodsId, parl:sesId) are not DDP-unique — the MNIS XML platform carries the same <Member Member_Id Dods_Id Pims_Id Clerks_Id> attributes per member. DDP pre-joins them as predicates; MNIS surfaces them per-record.

The reference doc has a deeper comparison and the empirical probe queries — see reference.md.

Three schema patterns worth knowing

The parl: schema is unusual in three ways. Skimming reference.md before writing queries will save you hours:

1. Mixin *Thing classes — entities multi-type. A typical Person carries 16–19 simultaneous types (`Person + Member + PartyMember + GovernmentPerson + MnisMember + DodsPerson + NamedThing
   • ContactableThing + WikidataThing + …`).
2. Source-system identity bridges as types — MnisThing, PimsThing, DodsThing, SesThing, WikidataThing. Each is both a class membership and a join key to the system named in the prefix. This is what makes SPARQL the right place for cross-system joins.
3. Past/Current dual classes — FormalBody vs PastFormalBody, Incumbency vs PastIncumbency, etc. "Current" is a class, not a date filter.

Namespaces

PREFIX parl: <https://id.parliament.uk/schema/>
PREFIX id:   <https://id.parliament.uk/>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX owl:  <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX xsd:  <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/>

Resource URIs look like https://id.parliament.uk/<opaque-id> where the opaque ID is an 8-character alphanumeric short-id (e.g. TyNGhslR). The same person/place/event has one URI across DDP, and the same URI is used by the parameterised-query browser and (where they overlap) by some REST APIs — e.g. treaties-api.parliament.uk returns the same https://id.parliament.uk/{shortId} IRI as the SPARQL store does for ?t a parl:Treaty.

Worked example

# Current MPs and their parties
curl -sLG 'https://api.parliament.uk/sparql' \
  -H 'Accept: application/sparql-results+json' \
  --data-urlencode 'query=
PREFIX parl: <https://id.parliament.uk/schema/>
SELECT ?person ?name ?party WHERE {
  ?seatIncumbency parl:seatIncumbencyHasMember ?person .
  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?seatIncumbency parl:incumbencyEndDate ?end . }
  ?person parl:personGivenName ?name .
  OPTIONAL { ?partyMembership parl:partyMembershipHasPartyMember ?person ;
                              parl:partyMembershipHasParty ?p .
             ?p parl:partyName ?party . }
} LIMIT 10'

Joining to the REST APIs

For people, the join key is the MNIS integer surfaced as parl:mnisId. The same integer is the Members API's /Members/{id}/... path parameter:

PREFIX parl: <https://id.parliament.uk/schema/>
PREFIX xsd:  <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
SELECT ?p ?name WHERE {
  ?p parl:mnisId "172"^^xsd:integer ;
     parl:name ?name .
}

For treaties / SIs / petitions / acts, the join is the URI directly: https://id.parliament.uk/{shortId} appears in both SPARQL subjects and the matching REST resource JSON.

For everything else (bills, divisions, hansard, RMFI, elections, EDMs, Erskine May, APPGs) — there is nothing to join SPARQL-side because those topics aren't in DDP. Use the dedicated REST skill.

Related skills

• parameterised-query — 124 named templates that wrap common SPARQL questions and return JSON without you writing the query. Same DDP store underneath. Coverage is therefore identical to this skill: the templates cover the same topics SPARQL covers, and equally don't cover what SPARQL doesn't. Use parameterised-query when there is a named template that fits the question; drop down to this skill for arbitrary joins, schema discovery, or topics outside the template set.
• odata — third public face of the same DDP store; same coverage, different query language (OData v4).
• See docs/sparql-endpoints.md for the DDP-vs-DD-vs-internal story: DDP is on this endpoint, DD's inferred closure is not.

Notes

• Endpoint is read-only (no SPARQL Update) and rate-limited.
• Big GROUP BY queries time out (read timeout from the back-end GraphDB at ~30s). For class-sized aggregates over Question (192k instances), use a windowed sub-select pattern — see reference.md.
• Constituency is defined but unpopulated (0 instances). Use ConstituencyGroup (4,722) or ConstituencyArea.
• Concept is defined but unpopulated; SKOS schemes / the Thesaurus are not on this endpoint. The Parliament Thesaurus lives on the legacy Linked Data API (linked-data-api skill) instead.
• Three opaque http://example.com/{uuid} predicates appear on every Person (5,229 statements each). They look like internal MNIS source UUIDs that leaked into the published RDF — treat as data-quality noise.

Using the CLI

See ../parl/SKILL.md for the CLI-wide conventions (output modes, flag rules, idiomatic chains).

This skill ships with a Node CLI alongside the documentation. From the repo root:

node bin/parl.mjs sparql --help

Or after npm link (one-time install):

parl sparql --help

Wraps the public SPARQL endpoint. Note this fronts the DDP graph (~7.5M statements, no inference); the DD graph is not on this surface — see docs/sparql-endpoints.md.

Examples

parl sparql query 'SELECT * WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 5'

Sanity-check probe.

parl sparql classes --limit 30

Top instance classes by frequency.

parl sparql rdfs-classes

rdfs:Class / owl:Class with labels.

parl sparql describe https://id.parliament.uk/TyNGhslR --format turtle

DESCRIBE a resource.

Library use (Node + browser)

Same surface as a JS module:

import * as fac from '../../lib/facilities/sparql.mjs';

// Each function is async and returns parsed JSON (or bytes for
// download endpoints). See the .mjs source for the full export list.

The library uses only fetch / URL / AbortController, so the same source runs in Node 18+ and in modern browsers.

Provenance to cite

Tier 1 — first-party UK Parliament. Authoritative.

• Inline cite: "(via api.parliament.uk/sparql (DDP store))" — once per paragraph in user-facing answers.
• On request, give the URL --raw printed.
• See docs/provenance.md for the cross-skill rules.