In parliamentary procedure, especially the Westminster system, a document is laid before the house or Laid on the Table of the House when it is formally recognised as having been made available for members of a deliberative assembly to read.
[1] Documents produced by official bodies or in response to orders from parliament are required to be laid before the house.
Originally, a physical copy of the document was placed on the table in the assembly chamber.
[1] This is no longer the case, with statutes and rules of order determining the mode by which a document is recognised as having been laid.
[2] Electronic publishing is common for documents laid in recent decades.