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 1368 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
That does not cover all situations, however. For example, I could have a trust as a person with a physical disability. If the person who is the trustee loses capacity for whatever reason and I lose capacity at the same time, how will the trust run if nobody else has been appointed? How will my payments be made?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Are you not concerned that people will be put off becoming trustees, if they do not understand how the role works, if they always have to consult lawyers and if there is no kind of style document? A lot of trusts are already struggling to find people. Are you not concerned that that will put more people off? What analysis have you done of that situation?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I appreciate that the bill was drafted by the Scottish Law Commission, however it is now a Government bill, so the Government’s view must be that that is the right thing to do.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
We will move on, if that is okay, minister.
Some stakeholders have queried how the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator’s powers under the charities legislation in relation to charitable trusts interact with the bill’s provisions that affect charitable trusts. For example, how does OSCR’s power to appoint interim trustees interact with the court’s power to appoint trustees under section 1 of the bill? If a protector is appointed to a charitable trust under chapter 7 of the bill, how will their powers and duties interact with OSCR’s powers to regulate charitable trusts? Will you offer some explanation on those two specific points?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Okay, thanks.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
The concern that we heard in evidence was about how to know that someone was incapable. People’s capacity can come and go, and the worry is that the decision might come down to four or five people sitting around a table who have no medical training but are concerned that an individual might not have capacity. You are asking people who have no medical knowledge or perhaps no legal background—smaller trusts might have to take legal advice—to take on a large responsibility, and concern was expressed about putting a lot of pressure on volunteers to make medical decisions.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Okay. Thank you for that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
No, convener—that was very helpful.
On sections 7 and 12, we have heard quite a lot of evidence, particularly last week, that it would be difficult for trustees to reach a decision on whether a particular trustee was incapable, and there was concern about the possible abuse of those sections, with trustees perhaps trying to get rid of each other by using that methodology. Should there be a statutory procedure for assessing a specific trustee’s capacity by a third party, such as a medical professional, or would there be drawbacks in going down that road?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
In the evidence that we have heard, particularly last week, there seemed to be some confusion with regard to the different types of trusts, as we have discussed already. Obviously, the Scottish Law Commission did not consider that, but has the Government considered trying to define a bit more clearly the different types of trust and how they work in practice? Indeed, we heard evidence from an individual with quite a lot of expertise in being a trustee, and she was not sure where one of the trusts that she is dealing with at the moment would fit into the bill. Has any thought been given to trying to define different forms of trusts, and if not, why not?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Jeremy Balfour
To follow up on that issue, what would be the disadvantage of allowing the trustees to decide whether to go to the Court of Session or to a sheriff court? I presume that the trustees would take legal advice, and their lawyers could advise them of the best option. What would be the disadvantage of letting the trust make that decision, instead of its having to go down a certain route?
