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 2081 contributions
|
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
From an administrative point of view, the mechanics suggest limiting it, but—I do not want to use the word “automation”—electronification of electoral registration may make it easier. Would it be reviewed at that stage?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Those provisions should apply to the petition process, the subsequent regional poll and/or a by-election. That is probably easier with regard to constituency by-elections, but the point should be made specifically in relation to regional polls and behaviour during the petition period.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Under the proposal in the bill, the question in the petition is, in essence, a finite one and, when the 10 per cent threshold is reached, there will be a recall. Should we simply rely on that finite question and, when it is answered, say, “There will be a recall,” or have you seen from previous examples any value in a petition staying open, given the constraint that people can say only, “Yes”?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
The reality is that, with the deep hope that the situation will happen infrequently, the exercise has to start every time that the situation occurs.
I want to go back to the challenges with regard to registration. A lot of the evidence that has been submitted relates to the challenges that occur if another local by-election is being held at the council level. Do we need to bring together the systems in respect of whether a person is or is not on that register, to take account of that challenge? I accept that that situation is administratively challenging, but is it one that, if the right level of clarification were to be given about the cut-off dates, could be made to work administratively?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I think that I am pushing at the point that the petition is not an electoral event but that, for the purposes of the behaviour of those who—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Thank you for giving evidence to the committee. I will suspend the meeting for a short while to allow for a change of panel members.
10:09 Meeting suspended.10:14 On resuming—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I welcome to the meeting our second panel for today’s evidence taking. We are joined by Sarah Mackie, head of the Electoral Commission in Scotland, and Jenny Brotchie, acting head of Scottish affairs at the Information Commissioner’s Office. Good morning to both of you. Graham Simpson, as the sponsoring MSP of the bill in question, is still with us, so I welcome him a second time.
If it is all right with the panel, I will move straight to questions. In the first instance, I want to look at time periods and the fact that the bill proposes a period of four weeks for the petition process rather than the six weeks that occurs in other places, particularly at Westminster, and which people are becoming used to. Is there a good reason to curtail the period to four weeks, or is it outweighed by the fact that having similar electoral periods might help people’s understanding?
Sarah, would you like to kick off?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
In your submission, you commented not on the identification question, but on the simple fact that, when someone goes to sign a petition, you know which way they are going to go. That is the proposal that sits with us in this bill, and it is, consequently, why the 10 per cent provision has been included.
Looking at the tight time period, is there any point in extending it beyond the point at which the 10 per cent threshold is reached?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Yes, just on that proposal—I will come back to the other proposals. Is there any value in the petition continuing to stay open for another two or three weeks when you know what the outcome will be?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Going back to the roundabout—or the cul-de-sac—that we drifted into on the yes/no question on the petition, I note from the current proposal and the examples that we have from the UK that someone simply goes in and indicates that they want a recall. Is there any value in expanding that to give voters the opportunity to put their view forward? Do you see any complexities in that respect? What do you see as the consequences of its being just a yes or no question?
