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 2597 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Colin Beattie
Exactly.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Colin Beattie
One of the most important things—it is the other side of the coin—was how FMEL spent the money. In your submission, you have a fairly short response on that question:
“Yes, and information was forthcoming.”
What was that information and how was it supplied to you?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
You project staff reductions in the coming years, but you are talking about training staff and putting in extra resources.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
I understand that your performance for April to June 2022 on first registrations was at 66.8 per cent. The aim is for all new registration cases to be completed within 35 days, but that is by March 2027.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
So 35 days is just a notional target.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
It will be five years before you will be where you want to be. That seems like an awful long time, when your performance percentages are already quite high. Why is not possible to do it more quickly?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
So why will it take until 2027 to get to 100 per cent?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
I will come back to your bespoke timescales in a second, but the target means that, over the next five years, you do not expect to deal with new cases within the period that you anticipate, and therefore surely you will go into arrears because of the ones that are not picked up. For the next five years, you will be treading water.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
That seems an awful long way off. I do not have any figures here for first registrations. I assume that dealings with whole are less in volume, and similarly with transfers of part—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Colin Beattie
Good morning. I would like to look at some of the issues around new cases. The key element is that you anticipate that new registration cases will be dealt with within 35 days. First, when you talk about new registrations, does that include dealings with whole and transfers of part?
