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 1222 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
We could spend a lot of time discussing this, and I am sure that there is a lot that we would like to hear from you, but, fundamentally, how appropriate are Henry VIII powers? Should we be pushing back on them, or is it that, like 21st century social media, it just has to happen that way now?
Dr Govan, you are shaking your head and not smiling, so I come to you first.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
My final questions are about the comments made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Select Committee in the House of Lords on how all of this works. Have those comments influenced or changed the way that you work in practice as drafters? If so, can you give us examples of how things have changed in the light of some of that committee’s reports?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
We are trying to work out how we, as a Parliament, hold the Government accountable when we have these framework bills. I think that everyone recognises the issue, but we are struggling slightly to find a solution to it. Given the expertise around this table, how would you suggest that we, as parliamentarians, hold the Government to account when a framework bill is introduced? I am afraid that I am going to start with you again, Andrew, because you are smiling and nodding.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, and happy new year to everybody. I want to follow up on Professor Whitaker’s opening remarks. Do we now have more skeleton or framework bills—or however we want to describe them—than we had historically or in previous generations, both here and in Westminster, but also in other jurisdictions across the world? If so, why is that? Is it because people do not want to make difficult decisions and want to leave it to others? Alternatively, is there some more philosophical view as to why such bills have become more prevalent?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That was helpful.
I have one further question. This particular Government’s justification is that it wants to involve as many stakeholders and as much of the community as possible, so it says, “We’ll get the framework bill passed and then we’ll go and do the consultation so that everybody can be involved in it.” As an Opposition politician, I suppose that my question is this: why not do the consultation first and then bring the bill forward? From a policy perspective, is it justifiable to say, “We want to get this right, so let’s involve as many people as possible, and it’s easier to do that once we’ve got the primary legislation passed”? I am just interested in hearing what you think of that from an academic perspective—and particularly from a social perspective, too.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, and thank you for coming. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that have already been made.
We are told that one of the reasons for having framework bills in Scotland is that the Government wants to consult further once the primary legislation is in place. Does it help you as a drafter to have the information from a consultation when you draw up primary legislation, or is it more helpful to have it when you are working on secondary legislation—or does it make no difference?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
It is coming up to 40 years since I started working in the law, which is a bit frightening, but one of the things that I remember from my first year of jurisprudence is that the point is to make good law—which means, in other words, that it can be understood by as many people as possible and implemented by the courts, if required. From a drafting perspective and given your vast amounts of experience, do you think that secondary legislation gives good law and clarity so that people know what the Government of the day is trying to do?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Do you not think that, when we are dealing with an area of law—say, criminal law—if it is all in the statute, it is easier for people to find and interpret the information, instead of their having to look at the primary legislation and then X amount of secondary legislation?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
