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 1475 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good morning, and welcome to the fifth meeting in 2025 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I have received apologies from Ruth Maguire. I welcome Rona Mackay as her substitute. I understand that Annie Wells is running slightly late. We will see whether she makes it. If not, she extends her apologies as well.
Before we turn to our main agenda item, I note for the Official Report that, further to our meeting on 20 February, the committee has agreed to re-accord recognition to the cross-party group on Taiwan following further examination of records regarding the group’s compliance with the code of conduct.
Our first item is a decision on whether to take in private item 3, which is a discussion on the evidence that—I hope—we are about to hear. Does the committee agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
If such work was done earlier in whatever process we are talking about, from that early sharing of postbags to the role of petitions, we would have the advantage of being able to say, “This Parliament is prioritising you, the public, and your issues.” However, that interesting idea of a committee reaching out much earlier to ask what the public would like us to do would be helpful for doing that, too. Would that be a fair conclusion to draw? I hope so—no pressure.
09:30Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. There have been a number of questions and discussions about the balance between the expertise of MSPs and the specialism that sits around them. As Tom Caygill pointed out, there is a value in the institutional memory that MSPs sometimes have of the journey that a piece of legislation has taken. However, as Cristina Leston-Bandeira pointed out, there are experts from the public who can, all the way through, offset the need for specialism. As Ken Hughes said, perhaps we want specialists not to make the decisions but to give the evidence.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
You are the bellwether in the seminar, Tom.
Cristina, you have already mentioned the Danish Parliament, which is not dissimilar to the Scottish Parliament. Are there any other examples of places that we can look at to see the importance of the cultural connection in committees as one piece of evidence that a committee is successful?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
I will go back—I am sorry, Paul, do you want to come in?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
I will not put that to the committee at the moment, if that is all right. I am conscious of the time, so we will move on to the questions on conveners.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
I thank the witnesses very much for their contributions today. I reiterate my comment that, if thoughts come to you afterwards, even while you are on the way out today, you should please feed them back to the clerks.
That brings the public part of the meeting to a close.
10:57 Meeting continued in private until 11:16.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. Interestingly, you talked about the resource imbalance. If there were unlimited resources, we could say, “Great, let’s have a massive Parliament and a massive Government.” However, is there something in the procedures about the timing of things? Could resource be created by lengthening the time between things?
We are looking at committee effectiveness. Part of that is to do with when committees get bills to scrutinise. Is there something to be said for looking at that wider issue? You mentioned the four-year session. We are now in the fourth year and approaching the fifth year of our session of Parliament. That latter stage is when a bulk of legislation always comes through, which is understandable. Is it worth looking at those timeframes and making them more explicit in order to balance out things? Would it be reasonable for a Government to have to operate under that constraint?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
I am sure that we will come to that in the range of issues that we want to talk about.
In our previous evidence session for our inquiry, there was an interesting discussion about whom committees have a responsibility to. There was also a fascinating discussion about the perspective of the public being made front and centre in the work of committees, particularly with regard to scrutiny.
I have a broader question for all the panel members. Is there a view that the Scottish Parliament is achieving the prioritisation of public issues over party-political issues and the subjective issues of MSPs? Are we giving enough weight to what is worrying the public?
Ken Hughes, do you want to chip in?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
We have an outward-looking vehicle that reaches out to the public: the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. By many accounts, it is well received and effective. Do we need to take the next step, which is to use the skills that we have to be outward-looking in involving the public—including in the Parliament building—and mine that resource for the purpose of bill scrutiny at a much more specific individual committee level? Would that assist?
