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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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. My final question is, unfortunately, an incredibly specific one but, again, it is about something that I have had an interest in for a while.
The Deloitte audit report included a list of recommendations, which now sit in the public domain. One of them was:
“The Commissioner’s Office should engage with the SPCB and Parliament to determine the reporting route for concerns about a Commissioner”.
The management update on that is worrying in the sense that there is no revised target date because input seems to be required from the SPCB. Given that we are looking at the annual report for last year, can you bring the committee up to date on engagement with the SPCB, particularly on that point, with regard to the structures that you have already described?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
Do you have confidence that the complainer will not misunderstand the different processes that are involved? I will turn that round. Do you have confidence that your website will show the route that will apply to the complainer, depending on who they are complaining about, and what is needed for their complaint to be registered, investigated and concluded?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
That is helpful.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence: Proxy Voting Scheme
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. I will obviously speak to Stuart McMillan, and, as a committee, we will write to him and suggest that we are anxious to hear his contribution when we look at the next stage of proxy voting.
10:56 Meeting continued in private until 11:30.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
For clarification, there are not 16 elements sitting at red on your risk register, are there?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
There are 16 elements in total.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
Do you envisage that, in that process, the reporting would be to the SPCB or to somewhere else? I know that that is a difficult question because you have not had a lot of discussion with the SPCB.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
It is right to say that, although the act itself was from very early on in the Parliament, it was a very—I will not say unique—unusual set of circumstances that led to it. Perhaps engagement at a later date about data and what can be deduced from it, the difference between complaints and cases, and the number of MSPs involved would be beneficial. I am grateful for your indication that you would be happy to have that engagement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
That is helpful. I can see the formal route that has been charted, but the reality is that all of this is based on relationships and confidence. Somebody who, to use a slightly archaic term, perceives that they have less power than the person whom they are concerned about and, indeed, less power than the person whom they are speaking to, needs to have strong relationships that allow them to raise issues. On a practical level, do you have confidence that such relationships exist, in the sense that someone could approach an individual and say, “Can I just have a word?”
You have spoken about the considerable change and increase in staffing. Such processes always present challenges in keeping the confidence or the identity, but they are also an opportunity to build the identity that you want.
Are you confident that the relationships are strong enough and exist for the process to work? Do you see the opportunity, with the changing personnel, to build an identity that you are happy with and that your staff are happy to be part of?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Martin Whitfield
—and, in due course, the communications strategy, which would also be useful.
I want to end with something that I did last time. In the final paragraph of your statement in the report, you rightly extend your gratitude
“to each and every one of the staff in the office for their unwavering dedication, their remarkable resilience”—
we have spoken about that today—
“and their support during this challenging period”
and say that you
“remain immensely proud to belong to this team.”
On behalf of the committee, I echo those words to you and your team. When we last discussed these matters, it was in an “exceptionally” challenging period, whereas we are now in just a challenging period. That does not mean that it is easy or that it is solved, but I thank you for your frank and honest evidence, and I thank Angela Glen for her assistance.
