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 914 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you. Sorry for throwing that at you, Laura.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
That makes sense.
I note that a trust deed can, in fact, override section 26, but a court can then later review the reasonableness of that override. I suppose that it would tend to look into whether people are behaving unreasonably towards the beneficiary.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
That makes sense. I think that that answer covered just about everything.
Section 49(3)(a) is about domicile. Professor Paisley from the University of Aberdeen has a few issues with it and told us that it would be harder to get information about who controls land and property if the trust were later to be treated as being resident overseas.
In its written submission to the committee, the Law Society of Scotland did not comment on the policy that underpins section 49. However, it did say that it thinks that the drafting of the domicile subsection is unclear in terms of its scope. The Law Society also said that the scope of the separate power of the protector to “determine” the trust’s “administrative centre” is unclear.
Do you agree with the academics’ interpretation of section 49 and do you have views on whether protectors should have the power to look at overseas domicile for trusts in order to challenge issues?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
Good morning, everyone. I will ask about sections 25 and 26.
Section 25 requires trustees to tell a beneficiary that they are a beneficiary and to give them all the trustees’ names and correspondence details. That is mandatory for certain types of beneficiary. For potential beneficiaries, trustees have some discretion in what information is provided under section 25.
Section 26 is about what information must be made available to beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries, but a trust deed can override that section, although a court can later review the reasonableness of that override.
There is quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing there, to make a point on what I have said. Various respondents to the committee’s call for views have said that the trustees’ duty to provide information to beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries under sections 25 and 26 is too onerous—they have to take into account too many elements. Do you have concerns about that? If you do, how would you amend the sections to address them?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you very much for that. Ken Swinton, do you want to say anything?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
That is perfectly understandable.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
There is a range of disagreement and agreement. The issue is wide ranging and is one of policy, rather than being one for the lawyers to sort out. The lawyers can argue about it later, but we will argue about it first.
I have one last thing to talk about, which is the domicile of the trust and where it is based. The academic panel of Professor Paisley, Professor Gretton and Yvonne Evans were all pretty much agreed that a protector should not be able to move the permanent residence of a trust outside Scotland. On that basis, and in relation to section 49 of the bill, were the academics correct when they said that permitting the protector of a trust to move the domicile of a trust outside Scotland was undesirable in policy terms? What are your views on whether protectors should be allowed to do that?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
That makes sense.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Bill Kidd
I understand exactly what you are talking about and can see how what you have said provides a bit of clarity on sections 25 and 26. However, is not there a wee issue for beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries in terms of trustees having too much power? Trustees might decide to go forward in a way that means that the beneficiary does not get as much from the trust as they otherwise might have had.
