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 2087 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. Part of the intention of this morning’s meeting is to explore that issue. I would like to use convener’s privilege to ask the first question, which is about proxy voting. Mr Naughten, I understand that your constitution prevents proxy voting. Is there a growing tide towards having proxy voting to allow access at times when elected members should perhaps be able to take off their elected member’s hat due to personal circumstances, but in a way that allows their constituents to still be represented? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Do you think that that comes from the cultural importance of your Parliament physically meeting in set spaces? As you say, it is one of the fundamental precepts of the constitution that the Parliament should physically meet. Does the demand for transparency and understanding drive and perhaps overshadow individual circumstances that mean that the members cannot attend Parliament?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
The microphones will be controlled by other people, but you are now switched on and we can hear you very clearly.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Dr Williamson, I understand that there are slight problems with your connection, so we will have an audio contribution from you, which I hope we will be able to hear more clearly.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Welcome back to our second evidence session on future parliamentary procedure and practice. I welcome Dr Sarah Childs from the Royal Holloway, University of London, and Dr Andy Williamson from Democratise, who is joining us online. I thank you for your attendance this morning. My intention is to move straight to questions from the committee in the hope that we can develop a conversation about certain themes that have come through in the evidence that we have received so far. I will pass you both into the more than capable hands of Collette Stevenson.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Dr Childs, we will hear from you first.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
I thank our second panel of witnesses for a very informative session. I hope that you continue to follow our inquiry with interest. We will, no doubt, bombard you with questions on various matters in due course.
On behalf of the committee, I once again thank Professor Childs for attending in person and I thank Dr Williamson, whom we managed, with technology allowing and the sheep and lambs being in the right place, to see very clearly by the end.
We now move into private session.
10:49 Meeting continued in private until 11:14.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Apologies, Dr Fox. We seem to be losing the line, so I think that we will try with just audio. Do you want to try now?
09:45Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 10th meeting in 2022 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I remind members who are attending virtually to place an R in the BlueJeans chat function if they want to come in on any issue.
Item 1 is a decision on whether to take in private item 3, which is consideration of the evidence that we will hear today. Does the committee agree to take item 3 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
I want to pursue that, Dr Fox. As a member, I came into the Parliament during Covid and never saw it in what someone described as its golden time—although I think that its golden time is still to come. Do you think that human beings just cannot get over that problem with regard to communication and simply need to meet and talk in person straight away? Are we not capable of creating a different culture that will still facilitate the creation of laws outside of chamber discussions, however that might happen? Should we be confident that human beings themselves, given their ability to communicate and articulate things, will find ways of doing that even if the ability to sit in the same room does not exist?
