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 1396 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
My understanding is that that is the situation now. In devolved areas, we can legislate for that and require procurement to follow certain processes, but for reserved or cross-border bodies that are outside the scope of devolved procurement legislation now, that will continue. We have that difference at the moment and nothing will change in that regard anyway.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
That is a good question. I know that Scottish procurement is about £14 billion. That includes local authorities, the national health service, other public bodies, the Scottish Government and so on. I do not have a figure for UK Government procurement in Scotland. It depends how you look at that—whether it is UK bodies that are operating in Scotland and placing their purchase orders from an entity in Scotland or UK Government bodies as a whole across the UK that may be buying from Scotland suppliers. There are a number of different ways to look at that, but I do not have that information to hand.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
In the way in which it is drafted it gives powers to UK Government ministers to change things that are devolved.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
The issue that Alasdair Hamilton has commented on is about updating. If a new treaty was signed with someone else, it would add that to the list of treaties that would need to be taken into account when you take forward procurement legislation. It covers that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
There is concern from Wales. The Welsh Government has not recommended consent either, on that basis.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
I will let officials comment on that, but, as I have said, my experience has been that engagement at ministerial level sometimes resolves things and sometimes it does not, but until you have the conversation, it is difficult to know the UK Government’s position.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
The bill will be taken through in the rest of this year. We obviously want this to be resolved sooner rather than later.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
It needs to be somebody who understands Scottish Government policy and the context within which we operate—somebody who understands our national strategy for economic transformation, our net zero activity, our global capital investment plan, our focus on infrastructure, our strategic transport plan and so on, and who is able to make the case as to why and how the infrastructure bank’s investments should be aligned with those priorities.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
I am not sure whether Wales has made exactly the same case. It can speak for itself.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
On the first point, as I said, the current situation is that Scottish law places requirements on bodies that are in devolved areas and bodies that are in reserved or cross-border areas are not included in that. This bill would cover them, so there is a different scope there.
On the practical effects, the problem is that the bill confers powers that could allow UK Government ministers to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament, so it is pretty broad and could cover a wide range of areas. The concern, therefore, is that we do not know whether it could have an impact, but it opens a door and what the UK Government chose to do with it would be a concern. We see issues because of the way in which the bill has been drafted and because it confers those powers. From our perspective, it is not acceptable for UK Government ministers to have the power to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament.
