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 1067 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
I was not a Government minister at that point in time. My understanding is that the proposal was made in advance of the ministerial control framework being in place to assess it. As I say, the programme for government will come out in September, and it will contain the work that the Government proposes to take forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
In relation to the seven existing commissioners, this goes back to what I said about it not being the Government’s role to decide to close down the offices of commissioners. People would rightly have concerns if the Government stepped into the parliamentary space and said that certain commissioners were no longer required and would be discontinued. Such a review should, rightly, be carried out by the parliamentary authorities.
As I said, there is a process for assessing whether new commissioners are required. The mechanism of including a sunset clause could absolutely be part of the toolkit, if everyone agreed that a commissioner was required and the proposal had passed through the control framework and other assessment processes. A sunset clause might be quite a valuable and helpful mechanism to guard against exactly what you have described.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
Yes. I have extracts from the MCF in front of me. The criteria to be considered include whether the function or service could be carried out by an existing body such as the Scottish Government, an executive agency, or any other public body that has already been established. A number of other questions are asked, in a similar vein.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
Yes, but the counterfactual is important. If part of what they see as being their role is to change perceptions and priorities, you could argue that, in an advocacy role, that is what they are trying to deliver. They are not necessarily trying to deliver a service.
However, you could also look at, for example, child poverty, and say that Scotland is clearly in a significantly better place than the rest of the United Kingdom. You could argue that there is evidence that supports that, but whether you attribute that to the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland is a matter for debate and for the relevant committee to dig into in more detail.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
Again, we might want to take more information directly from those who work in that space in Government, but, clearly, it is hugely important that the Scottish Fiscal Commission is independent of the Government. I am new in post, but I understand that the extent to which its budgeting process is assessed and its direct interaction with the Government over its operational efficiency will absolutely be part of the conversation. That said, it is hugely important that we draw a line between that and its independence in the way in which it carries out its function.
It is an interesting point, though, and I am happy to explore it further and come back with more specifics.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
That is up to Parliament to decide. I will not tell the convener how to run his committee, but if the committee decided that it wanted to do that, the Government would be supportive of that step.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
I will be careful what I say. It surprised me, but, as I said at the outset, it is absolutely not Government’s job to tell committees which witnesses they should bring in and what they should ask them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
That would primarily come through the committee structure, so that relates to the answer that I have given: Parliament would bring people in and take evidence from them through its committee structure, and it is in everybody’s interest that parliamentary committees are doing that as effectively as possible.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
No; that is not what I said, either. The Parliament has a scrutiny function to perform, which it carries out through its committees. There is a budget for carrying out that work. One of the SPCB’s roles is to ensure that it is managed, effectively and efficiently, and delivers on what the Parliament has asked it to do. The same case could be made right across the landscape for any of the other public sector bodies that are asked to carry out functions. They have a budget—in many cases, a reducing budget—to deliver similar services. That is what efficient government is about.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Ivan McKee
I am not saying that they do not, or that we are not doing that, or that we are not robustly assessing proposals as they come forward, or that the Parliament should not be looking at and reviewing existing commissioners to see whether they are delivering value for money, or that the Government will not support that work, because we very much look forward to doing so.
10:30