Buyout group Apax Partners' media team has sold The Stationery Office, the UK firm that publishes the Highway Code and Hansard, the official report of debates in Parliament, to a trade buyer in a £120m (€177m) deal.

TSO, which was previously a division of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, will become the new public sector arm of Williams Lea, a document services firm recently bought by German logistics company Deutsche Post.