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 3214 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
To start with, I will follow on from what Michael Marra asked you, Ms Haughey. You have said various things. You specifically talked about system-wide issues, and then you said that, because of the history of the problems through the 1960s and so on, that is specifically why there is a need for the patient safety commissioner. I am asking you to speculate a bit, but do you think your committee would take a different view if a commissioner was proposed for something specific such as multiple sclerosis or arthritis? Some of the arguments are that some people’s voices are not being heard, and their voices would be heard more if there was a commissioner for different kinds of disability—that has been proposed—and so on and so forth.
Was the patient safety commissioner unique because of the circumstances?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
I realised that from one of your colleagues. Our earlier witnesses said when they were speaking for their committee and when they were speaking for themselves. We can take that on board if you want.
I have mentioned specific cases, but my underlying question is about how, on the one hand, we avoid having a huge organisation that would cover everything and how, on the other hand, we avoid having so much overlap. It seems that the more commissioners we have, the more overlap there will be, and your committee might suffer as a result of that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Do you think that, because young people do not have a vote, there is a special argument for their commissioner—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Do disabled people not have the same right?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Okay. Mr Whitfield, you have suggested that a commissioner should report to a committee, which might simplify the system. Another suggestion that has come to us is that the commissioner should work more hand in glove with the relevant committee and that they should see themselves as doing the same work. It was even suggested that the committee should assign work to the commissioner. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
One argument is that, despite the good work that the third sector does in a lot of areas, it does not have the power to make binding recommendations—that phrase has been used a number of times. It would be quite strong if bodies could dictate. You suggested that one body—I am sorry, I cannot remember which one it was—makes recommendations that almost always are accepted.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Following on from that, another model that has been suggested to us—this would probably not affect some of your areas, Mr Whitfield—is the Scottish Human Rights Commission being given a bit more power so that it could cover human rights overall in areas such as disabilities and children, which would all fall within that, although there could be separate rapporteurs for those groups. Do you have any views on what the effect of that might be? You have mentioned the issue of complexity.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Okay. Let me play devil’s advocate. The argument for a commissioner for disabled people is that, as not all disabled people are children, they still need a commissioner, even though there would be an overlap with the children’s commissioner.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
John Mason
Okay, thanks—that was maybe an unfair question.
I will ask Audrey Nicoll about alternate models. Within your committee’s remit, there are quite a lot of alternate models. You mentioned the inspector of constabulary and the prisons inspector, both of which are funded by the Government, not by Parliament, but yet they are, I think, quite independent. Is that another model that works?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pension Age Disability Payment
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
John Mason
Would there have been issues as to exactly what the money was going to be used for? A buggy is a positive thing that gets people to the shops and up and down the road, as compared to a car, which most of us now see as not a good thing, because we want to reduce the number of cars. Is that a factor?
