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 3226 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Well, we are pursuing this inquiry to ensure that it does not wither on the vine, and there will be the statutory review next year.
I think the point that Jamie Livingstone made about the round-table session is extremely significant. In fact, that was the bit that I highlighted to ask you about when we came to that subject. I was pleased that you brought that into the discussion—it is certainly something that we will put to Scottish ministers.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I was actually going to bring you in on that subject. I am going to let John Mason in, and then we will come back to you to talk about finance. It is a thread that runs right through the submissions, and you have made several specific comments relating to it, so we will come back to you after a question from John Mason.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I do not necessarily disagree with what you have said, because local authorities are encouraged to do short-term, medium-term and long-term planning. However, the Government is not going to make an overall commitment in terms of that. Organisations must plan for those different scenarios and we, as a committee, want to ensure that there is as much funding that they can rely on—as much sustainable funding—as possible. We will certainly be pressing the Government on that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Vicki Bibby has been very patient.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Yes. The phrase “our people” does not need to be there; it should just be “people” or “everyone”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We have about 16 or 17 minutes left, and the last topic that I want to touch on is collaborative working. After that wee topic, I want to give all our guests an opportunity to make one last comment on any aspect that we may or may not have touched on that they feel is critically important for the committee to pick up on.
Neil, how does the NPF underpin collaborative working?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Come at it from a different angle if you wish.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You make a fundamental point. If Public Health Scotland can save money through an initiative for another area of the Scottish Government’s work, should some of that resource go back to Public Health Scotland, for example?
When I used to work in pharma, we had a staff suggestion scheme on how to improve the company, its business, its profitability and so on. Nobody put in any suggestions, but the suggestion was then made—by yours truly, I have to say—that if the company gave a little reward to people who made a suggestion—of, for example, 10 per cent of the money that was saved by the company as a result—it might get more suggestions. The company was inundated with suggestions. A lot of people in the company felt, “It’s making multimillion-pound profits and I’m not getting anything out of it.” As soon as there was an opportunity for people to get a reward, they put in suggestions. Some of those suggestions saved the company huge amounts of money, and the staff benefited accordingly.
Even in the public sector, that can work. The public service ethos is that if you deliver something, you should want to do it for the sake of doing it, apart from anything else, but, at the same time, if, for example, Public Health Scotland was able to save £1 million in another department, why should half of that money not return to Public Health Scotland to contribute towards other initiatives?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Quite right.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I have just one more question for Mirren Kelly before I open it up to colleagues. On economic development, you say in your submission:
“Local Government, despite recognition as a key partner in the delivery of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation ... and being a sphere of government, has had little engagement in the development of NSET.”
Can you tell me why that would be?
