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 3461 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
No, we did not. I am sorry, but we lost the last sentence, Mr Lyon. Could you conclude that point again?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
I understand all that and it is a helpful exposition of the position. It sounds—and I am choosing my words carefully—as though force majeure motivated the change in the position as opposed to a re-evaluation of HIAL’s original thinking and as though an evolution of the various points that you have just raised led to the change of heart. Is there a bitterness in HIAL that the change has been brought about and that it is not the route that you would have preferred to take?
That leads me to another question that has come up in some of the evidence that we have received. I have to say that Prospect seemed reassured on this point, but is there a commitment that the strategy that will now be followed will be sustained? Is there no suggestion that the plan is to return to the original proposal after a period of time and when there is a further window of opportunity?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Thank you. That is clear.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
That is great—thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
I do not know that I came to those value judgments on the development of the website any more than I do over whether it is time, quality or cost on the lift refurbishment programme.
The key point is that the corporate body is acutely aware that it is public money—that is where we start from in our examination—and that we must have a product that matches the quality and expectation of the Parliament. However, we defer and delegate to the people who are charged with the relevant responsibility for taking the project forward. We do not interfere in an executive way in the operational decisions that you just asked about.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
The Finance and Public Administration Committee has its variable interest from one year to the next. I often used to be interrogated at excruciating length about the commissioners. The committee’s interest can shift in any given year, given the priorities of the public understanding of the Parliament’s work. The question that you put has to go to the people who were charged with delivering the project.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Convener, that is my fault. Since we stopped producing paper copies of the Official Report, I have become increasingly concerned that parliamentarians have not been bothering to access it and, therefore, might have less familiarity with the general business of the Parliament than was the case previously. Therefore, for no reason other than that it would be of enormous value to me, I requested that the Official Report be taken out of the general “go and find it” category and be proactively sent to all members every day, as used to be the case with the old paper copy.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
In the year to which you refer, I gave evidence to the previous finance committee and colleagues asked me questions about development of the new website, which are in the Official Report. Therefore, MSPs on the predecessor committee were aware of development of the website and interrogated me on it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
We have already responded to feedback in number of ways, and a number of initiatives are already planned. As well as the matter of the range of users, the team also had to accommodate the significant issue of the number of ways in which people now seek to access the website. There has been a huge shift to using mobile digital technology to access it, which was not something that the previous system was capable of sustaining.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Jackson Carlaw
With regard to the development and delivery of multiyear projects of core services that are provided by the Parliament, you could point to a number of different examples. Maintenance of the lifts is an example: you might ask how much you know about how much it is costing to replace or maintain the lifts in the building. Such costs are all incorporated within the particular line item elements of the budget. I think that the corporate body would be more concerned were it to find—we would be alerted to it—that there was a significant problem evolving in the development of a project that was now somehow spiralling out of control or had spiralling costs.
In each year—and at each meeting of the corporate body throughout the year—the various departments of the Parliament schedule fairly detailed and extensive reports, which we consider. I think that many of those are subsequently available to the public as minutes. So, I do think that it was sufficiently transparent.
With regard to the overall portfolio of a £100 million budget—it might have been about £80 million at that time—the level of detail that the committee sought or asked us about was accommodated. As I said, I was asked questions in that year and in subsequent years about the project’s ongoing development.
