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 1467 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
That might be a necessity of its time. However, we do not particularly want to release prisoners out of the necessity of the time.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
Mr Simpson is free to lodge an amendment to that effect.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
I am simply saying that the Government would not ordinarily want to have the necessity of undertaking that in an emergency.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
Ultimately, the Parliament has to satisfy itself that it has the right legislative arrangements in place to deal with any given scenario. The statute book includes a number of strong characteristics, not least of which is the ability of the chief medical officer, for example, to offer his view on the situation that we face. That has influenced the judgment that was made on the construction of the bill. It is a matter for the Parliament to scrutinise and consider whether it believes that appropriate descriptions and explanations are in place in the legislation, and the Government will then consider that further.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
We did that because of the necessity of the situation in relation to Covid, which might require us to take particular steps, as we had to do during the Covid pandemic. As a general rule of thumb, that was not envisaged as a power that was appropriate to be included in legislation of this type on a long-term basis.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
We can consider that adjustment and would be likely to move towards it. The recent Coronavirus (Discretionary Compensation for Self-isolation) (Scotland) Bill took an approach in which we took explicit responsibility for setting out the rationale for the necessity of acting with urgency. I am therefore happy to consider what you suggest. It strikes me as a change that the Government would be likely to embrace, given what we did in that bill.
12:00Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
I am wholly committed to exploring that third way, if calling it that is not too offensive. I am very happy to do that. I might take some advice from Steven Macgregor, after saying what I am about to say, but I think that the challenge is that we would need input from the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee’s perspective on standing orders. The undertaking would then become slightly broader. I am not familiar with that committee’s workload and whether it could address that question on the same timescale as that for the scrutiny of the bill. However, if we proceed with the timetable for the bill, that will in no way dampen the Government’s willingness to participate in a discussion about putting in place an alternative procedure that is somewhere between made affirmative and expedited. I am very happy to look at how we might apply that. Does Steven Macgregor want to add anything?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
No. Essentially, the matter of necessity kicks in on those questions. For example, we had to face the necessity to move to a situation in which our schools did not function in the way to which we were accustomed. We would want to avoid the necessity of releasing prisoners early, because courts have decided that prisoners must serve particular sentences. No particular rationale exists as to why that provision should be there in perpetuity, because it conflicts with fundamental elements of our legislative framework and the expectations of members of the public about the nature of those circumstances and how we handle them.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
That is simply because those measures are not ordinary elements of policy that we would want to have in place.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
John Swinney
As I have indicated, the Government will certainly happily co-operate with all those processes.
