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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 3226 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I will bring in Liz Smith, who will be followed by Michelle Thomson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
My final question before I open questions up to committee members is to Ms Wallace.
We were in Dundee last week. Although there was a lot of enthusiasm there for the NPF, one individual said to me that the problem that they had with it was that it was yet another series of things that Government expected them to do. We spend a lot of time having meetings and we have this and that set of objectives. They can be overlapping and not quite contradictory, but a huge amount of energy is taken up in asking what we prioritise. How do we cut through the Gordian knot of all the different objectives that have been given to local authorities and other organisations so that people can see more clearly and help effectively to progress the aims of the NPF?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
The next item is to take evidence on the Scottish Parliament’s website as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s budget.
We are joined today by Jackson Carlaw MSP, member of the SPCB. He is accompanied by Scottish Parliament officials Michelle Hegarty, deputy chief executive; Alan Balharrie, group head of digital services; and Susan Duffy, group head of engagement and communications. Good morning and welcome to the meeting. I invite Mr Carlaw to make some opening remarks.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is to take evidence on the national performance framework.
I put on the record my thanks to all those who took part in the workshops relating to our national performance framework ambitions into action inquiry last week. I hope that everyone found the events in Dundee and Glasgow useful and interesting. I certainly did, and colleagues to whom I have spoken certainly did, too.
To build on last week’s discussions, we will return to taking formal evidence in our inquiry. Our witnesses today are Dr Ian Elliott, senior lecturer in public leadership and management at Northumbria University and honorary chair of the United Kingdom Joint University Council—we have only an hour and a half for this session; I thought that I was going to spend most of it reading out his qualifications—Dr Max French, lecturer in systems leadership at Newcastle business school, Northumbria University; and Jennifer Wallace, director of Carnegie UK. Good morning. I welcome you all to the meeting and thank you for your written submissions to the inquiry.
We will move straight to questions. The Auditor General for Scotland said in a blog on 7 September that Scotland is suffering from
“a major implementation gap between policy ambitions and delivery on the ground.”
He went on to say:
“I am not convinced that public sector leaders really feel accountable for delivering change”.
What do the panellists feel about that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I see that, in the section of your submission entitled “Soft power strategies”, you talk about
“galvanising stories which capture the public interest and communicate its values, rather than merely list statistics”.
Can you talk us through that a wee bit?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
A basic thing that I referred to earlier is the fact that you have to go on to the old website to look at the Official Report. Surely that is a nonsense. I do not think that it is just a coincidence that, since the new website has been launched, for the first time in more than 20 years, members now get sent the Official Report every day. One might suspect that that is done so that we do not have to use the new website. Surely—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I understand the need for a software upgrade, but I find it surprising that hardware is being replaced.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
When the committee went out to hold workshops last week, we found a huge amount of enthusiasm and energy for the NPF, but the issue is how widespread that is. Your research and, indeed, the Scottish Leaders Forum action group are important in identifying where there are issues.
Ms Wallace, you said in your submission:
“While there are some sectors and Directorates where the National Outcomes are more visibly embedded, there are many places where other statutory duties or non-legislative frameworks are seen to take precedence.”
Can you give some examples of that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much for that very helpful opening statement.
The first point that I will touch on relates to structure, effectiveness and working practices. The civil service is reserved under schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, but
“devolved administrations operate as a single organisation, which is designed to encourage cross-government working”.
When devolution occurred, it was agreed that there would be
“a new, more flexible structure designed to focus the activity of government on collective rather than departmental objectives”,
with a
“relatively compact governing structure”.
Do you feel that that has succeeded? I realise that you have been in post for only a number of weeks and that you are probably still looking at things, but how different do you feel the structure here is from the UK structure, and how do you intend to develop further a distinct Scottish civil service identity?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You have touched on delivery. I am intrigued by the idea of a delivery executive. Could you talk to us about it for a couple of minutes, please?
