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.
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Displaying 1653 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Does that not go back to the fundamental question of what a recall is for? The principle of a recall would appear to be to give the electorate the ability to remove an individual whose behaviour has fallen below whatever the acceptable level is. Now, however, we seem to be discussing whether the purpose of the recall is to allow a current snapshot of the electorate’s view of political parties and who governs the country. That is at the expense of the individual, but it is also at the expense of removing the process of holding an elected individual to account for their behaviour and instead providing more of what people would want by way of a general election.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Yes, there are other representatives in an area.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Excellent. I am grateful.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Our second agenda item is our continued consideration of the Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill at stage 1. We are joined by our first panel, which consists of three witnesses. I say good morning to Dr Ben Stanford, a senior lecturer in law from Liverpool John Moores University, who joins us online; Dr Nick McKerrell, a senior lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University; and Professor Alistair Clark, professor of political science at Newcastle University.
We will move straight to questions. Should any witness wish to come in, I ask you to catch my attention or type an R in the chat function.
Finally, I say good morning to Graham Simpson MSP, who has sponsored the bill. I will be more than happy to allow Graham to come in to ask questions and seek clarifications when he wishes.
I hope that everyone is content with that. I will kick off the evidence session by asking about the overarching purposes of the bill, and the circumstances in which an MSP can be removed from office during a parliamentary session, including whether what we have at present is too limited. Is the bill necessary, and does it fulfil those purposes?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I have a follow-up question. I note that a number of other legislatures use recall. What are the highlights in that regard? What examples exist outwith Scotland and, indeed, outwith the United Kingdom, to which we should pay attention in order to learn about the more detailed aspects?
I am happy to go to Dr Stanford first, if he wants to contribute.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
So, from a policy discussion point of view, we should keep the election period for the by-election separate from the period of electoral activity, which would be the petition.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
But it is possibly a discussion for another time.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I am sorry, Emma, but Ben Stanford also wants to contribute.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I want to pick up Ben Stanford’s comment about whether the electorate would be concerned about not having a choice. That goes back to the question of who is being punished and what the role of recall is. Is it about an individual MSP—irrespective of how they came to the Parliament—behaving in a way that is unacceptable, or is it about punishing a political party?
Do you have any confidence that, if the process was specifically and openly about dealing with an MSP whose behavioural choices are such that they should not represent people, the challenge in respect of an electorate just wanting to punish a political party would be less of a concern? Alternatively, are those two issues just so intertwined that we cannot differentiate between them?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Another challenge is that, with a petition, it might be difficult to identify who is doing the advertising and the leafleting to urge people to sign it.
