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 827 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
I feel that I have already explained the Government’s position in that regard, but I always like to give good value, so I will ask Rachel Rayner to talk about what she would look at in going through that process.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
Gordon, could you say something from the perspective of the work that you do?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
As I said earlier, when the LCM comes in, a decision has to be made about how it affects us—the Scottish Government—and how we deal with the legislation. When we go through the whole process, we have to ensure that we have covered everything. I think that what you are asking about, Mr Kerr—indeed, you said it yourself—is whether there is a template that we can use to cut and paste every LCM, but what I and my officials have been trying to say is that there is no such template, because everything is different. Some things can be more complex than others, and sometimes the process is quite simple and there is no issue. Recently, though, issues have arisen more often than not, and we then have had to lay an SSI before the Scottish Parliament.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
From my experience as a back bencher and as a member of committees such as this one, I would say that we have the option of looking at the information as it comes through from the Government. You will be made aware of an LCM coming through—and, indeed, if an SSI comes through. The checks and balances to do that sort of thing are available in the Parliament as it is.
I think that you are trying to hint at the possibility of there being a better way of looking at these things. If so, I am quite open to a more transparent process for the committees and the Parliament, and I am quite happy to look at such a suggestion. Indeed, any other suggestions could be part of our consideration of the process whereby information goes backwards and forwards between us and the committee.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
It is always a good thing to agree with each other.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
That is me killed in Paisley now.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
My door is always open to members of the committee or whoever, and we can discuss offline any matter that you might want to raise. What I often say—and people have said that this will come back to bite me—is that I do not have a monopoly on good ideas. If anyone has any, I am quite happy to steal them—I am sorry; I mean, I am happy to work with them on it.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
I will bring in Karen Auchincloss.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
I am glad that Mr Sweeney said that we have managed to deal with a lot of the historical commitments that were pursued by predecessor committees. The simple answer is that we are still committed to making sure that we get the work done. Some things have been on-going.
I had thought that I might be asked about that, so I asked what we have on the decks and what is still there that we can get done and clear out. That is one of the things that I would like to do, but, as with all things in life, sometimes it is a wee bit complicated.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
George Adam
This time last year, when I first came to the committee, Karen Auchincloss’s predecessor told me that the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill was a perfect example of the Government working with the SLC to ensure that things are brought forward. That bill then became quite difficult and complex. It is such a complex and technical bill that I said to Karen’s predecessor that I thought of it as the unmovable objects bill because it did not seem to move. I sat here and told the committee that we would go forward with that, but then we hit difficulties and quite a lot of issues had to be solved. Rachel Rayner may be able to say more about that.
