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 4037 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Well, clearly, you are at odds with the committee—which represents four political parties—on this issue. I know that colleagues want to explore that matter in greater detail, so I will allow them to do so.
I have one more question—Lesley Fraser was here last week, and I am sure that she can guess what I am going to ask. Mr Swinney said:
“the permanent secretary is not an individual; they are an office holder.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 26 April 2022; c 7.]
Do you agree with that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that clarification. Colleagues are champing at the bit, so I will open out the session. I will go first to Daniel Johnson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
On that note, I will end the meeting, which has been long. I appreciate the permanent secretary’s responses to the committee’s questions. We will continue to explore issues relating to public administration in government.
That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item, which is consideration of appointments and reappointments to the Scottish Fiscal Commission, will be in private.
12:17 Meeting continued in private until 12:28.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that and for your earlier response. I will open up the session to colleagues round the table. The first person to ask questions will be John Mason, to be followed by Daniel Johnson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much. That concludes our questions for the moment. We will let you know, Dr Lombardi.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I welcome to the meeting Professor Graeme Roy, who is nominated as chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. As before, we will move straight to questions. [Interruption.] Who stole my questions during the interval? Ah, that is what it is—I wrote them on a completely different set of paper.
You have made it clear in your statement that you are passionate about the Scottish economy, Professor Roy. Why do you want to chair the Scottish Fiscal Commission and what would you change, introduce and improve to enhance the work of the commission?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You have talked a lot about communication; for example, in your statement you said:
“I would be keen to use my networks, including via the ESRC Economic Observatory, to extend the profile of the SFC.”
Can you talk a bit more about that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We have almost exhausted our questions, although Daniel Johnson and I still have some.
Permanent secretary, we have discussed myriad issues this morning, including maintenance and improvement of ethics, openness and transparency, diversity, structure, improving data collection and retention, culture and behaviour, record keeping, outcomes, policy decisions, the relationship with Westminster and giving of evidence to committees.
However, we have not touched on a practical issue that exercises all members of the Scottish Parliament, which is ministerial responses to correspondence. Many MSPs, across the party divides, have expressed great frustration about the time that is taken to respond to letters on matters that are of extreme importance to our constituents, as you can imagine.
We realise that you have had staff issues in recent years because of Covid and so on, but the situation was not great before the pandemic. I have spoken to civil servants who deal with correspondence and I understand that a rigid process has to be undergone before a letter goes to a minister for sign-off. I appreciate that there can be a delay at that point.
What can be done to expedite the process? Also, what can be done to ensure that the response to a letter to a minister relates to the question that is asked? Sometimes I have waited six to eight weeks for a response, only to then be too embarrassed—frankly—to send it to the constituent.
Another issue is that when I send an urgent letter to a minister, it does not seem to be treated differently from a letter that might not be time stressed.
Also, I have recently had to chase up the ministerial correspondence unit on issues that I considered to be of major significance—not to an individual constituent, but more broadly to my constituency—when I have not even received an acknowledgment after six weeks. I note that Liz Smith is nodding fiercely at that comment. What can be done to deal with that very practical and pragmatic issue, which affects all of us?
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?
