Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 1523 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thank you. I would like to finish off with Professor Flinders, since he was cut off in his prime, as it were. Throughout this whole conversation is the theme of maturity, whether it is about how we deal with risk, innovation, complexity or power. Do you have any final thoughts or reflections on what you have heard thus far? This is the academic side of decision making.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Do you have any bright ideas on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for that. I am laughing slightly, given that we are operating in a political environment.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I do not disagree about any of the principles, but the devil will be in the detail. What I am looking for are your assurances that the multi-agency meetings will put an equivalent level of attention on the costs and the savings, which you have outlined, as they will on driving forward the policy. The last thing that you, as a new minister in post—and I appreciate that you are talking about something on which you have had no say—would want is for this to be subject to considerable cost overruns because the things that are missing from the FM are missing because they are complex and difficult and you do not have policy detail.
I suppose that I am looking for assurances, because some people think that the funding is quite dull compared with the policy; however, if you think that, you are taking a risk, and I would not want to see you do that. I am simply looking for your assurances that you will pass that on to the people who are supporting you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. I will ask Professor Flinders a couple of questions from an academic perspective.
09:45Your submission makes comments about culture, behaviour, avoiding groupthink, confirmation bias, and so on. You also point out that there is a need for critical friends. How is that limited when power—for instance, over someone’s job, career or their future line of funding, in instances where third sector organisations rely on Government—comes into play? What are your general thoughts about how prevalent that is and how commonly it is understood as a risk in the public sector?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
That is helpful. The middle-road approach to continuous improvement that academia brings is worth the committee exploring further when we look at comparables in Scotland. I know that Sophie Howe wants to come in on my earlier point, then I will head back to Professor Flinders.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
We cannot see you, but we can hear you clearly.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Okay. I get what you are saying about the scale of representation, and you make that point clear in your submission.
Have there been times when, in terms of line of sight of funding, you have felt that you or any of the organisations that you represent have been required to give what you might see as the right answer or the preferred answer because of the mechanism of funding and fears or uncertainty over that? Is that a general concern or a fear that you hold?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Do you think that, in general, the Scottish Government wants a critical friend or is that a statement that it uses but that is a kind of esoteric desire? There is a difference between the two.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
That was serendipity, Lucy, because I intended to bring you in on the thread of trust, power and decision making, as I have specific questions about your very fulsome submission, which I appreciate was submitted on behalf of Scottish Women’s Aid, Close the Gap and Engender.
However, just to finish the point about how there could be a subliminal effect on bringing thoughts or decision making to the table, I want to ask about something contentious. When Parliament had its big debate about the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, I was surprised to find that no qualitative impact assessment had been done, over a period of six years, on the impact on women who had been raped or sexually assaulted by those with fully intact male genitalia in what they would consider to be safe spaces. I make no comment on the rights or wrongs of that—or on any of that debate—and instead I am exploring it from a decision-making point of view, because it is surprising that no qualitative impact assessment was done in six years.
My question to you and all the other witnesses is whether you have sought qualitative assessments in decision making. You mentioned equality impact assessments. Did you seek those and were you discouraged, or did you not seek them? How did that come about during a period of six years? I appreciate that you might not have been at Engender for six years, but I am interested in that, because it framed a decision-making process.
