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 1790 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Elections obviously have tight rules on campaign expenditure: who does it, how it is done and how it is reported. When the minister gave evidence about the recall petition, he made the point that an individual could face an unknown campaign to remove them. Would that need to be addressed in secondary legislation? Would you expect the financing in relation to the petition to be dealt with in secondary legislation, and should it be dealt with by secondary legislation for the purposes of the recall petition?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Let me delve into that. You talked about serious offences; there might be other offences that a group of the community would perhaps despair at. For example, the provision would be triggered if someone were in prison for more than six months for contempt of court, but people might dispute the reason for the sentencing. I am not inviting you to comment on that unless you wish to. Are you content that the trigger should be the six-month imprisonment sentence rather than the reason for which the six-month imprisonment—or, indeed, more but less than 12 months and one day—has come about?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Today, we conclude our oral evidence sessions on the Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill at stage 1. I welcome Graham Simpson, who is the member in charge of the bill. He is joined by Ben McKendrick, senior clerk in the Scottish Parliament’s non-Government bills unit, and Catriona Lyle, who is from the Scottish Parliament’s legal services office. Graham, before we move to questions from members, would you like to open on the purpose of the bill and the reasons for it?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 11th meeting in 2025 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I have received apologies from Ruth Maguire, so I welcome Rona Mackay, who is attending as a committee substitute.
Our first item of business is for the committee to agree to take in private item 4, which will be discussion of the evidence on a member’s bill that we are about to hear. Are members content to take that item in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
I cannot imagine that.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
The challenge is in the way that the bill is drafted. There are objective tests to be met, such as being sentenced to imprisonment, and there is no excuse for that. There are then the more subjective behavioural choices. I do not want to use the word “excuses”, because they are not excuses, but there might be explanations for those choices. I am just trying to work out which is the most important from your point of view.
An objective, simply assessed test is that you are in prison. A more subjective test is absence, and if you can give a reason, such as general data protection regulations, privacy, family support and all that, then that is all right. However, the voter from that area is going to say, “They said that that was all right, but they did not say why.”
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Emma Roddick has a question.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Right. That is what I am driving at.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
It is the act of losing one’s liberty that occasions the provision.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Martin Whitfield
Thank you very much for your opening comments, particularly those about a committee member whom we hope to see return in the very near future. Now is the moment for all those people whom you have grilled to open the popcorn and pull their chair forward.
I will kick us off. You answered my first question, on what you would say is the main purpose of recall. I would like to explore that with you a bit. In much of the documentation and, indeed, the representations that you have made today, you have talked specifically about the MSP as an individual and about their behaviour or choices falling below what their electorate could reasonably expect of them. In the bill, you lay out some simple, objective tests to determine whether an MSP has fallen short. There are, however, also subjective tests, such as providing a reasonable explanation for why something has happened. Do you find that a challenge? We would potentially put into legislation something that others—possibly this committee or its future iterations, as your bill suggests—would decide. Are there challenges in relation to giving subjective tests to future committees when the bill also contains simple objective tests in relation to sentencing and things like that? What is your thinking about those two decisions?
