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 2506 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
You have spoken about women’s enterprise centres being at the heart of developing communities. I can see a virtual link with getting more women involved in e-commerce and what we want to do with encouraging science, technology, engineering and mathematics as we move down the generations. Are there any other ideas that would lend a shift to the systemic issues that we have with town planning? Most surveyors and traffic planners are men. It is perhaps a hard question, given that it is not your specialism.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
E-commerce, its enablers and the skills that are needed will be a big topic in the committee’s inquiry, and I suspect that other committee members will come in on that subject.
I will finish off the piece about women-led businesses. In addition to the areas that we have already highlighted, given that this is a generic inquiry into town centres, my second question is: do you have any other ideas about what we need to do to put women-led businesses at the heart of town centre redevelopment? I appreciate that that is a hard question, given that that is not your specialism, but I would like to hear other ideas before we move on.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
I think I might just ask you to stop there, as—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
I want to explore with Carolyn Currie in particular an issue relating to women in enterprise. We have read a lot about how to support and develop town centres. I appreciate that that is highly complex, but I wonder to what extent you have considered how well women-led businesses are reflected in town centre development. For example, we know that our cities and, to some extent, our towns have been designed around cars. I have not heard much or been able to read much about putting women’s businesses, or diversity in general, at the heart of town centre development.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
I am talking about the general principle. In a report from some years ago, Westminster’s Public Administration Select Committee said that it is “a constitutional fiction” that officials in Edinburgh and London are part of a unified civil service. What general assessment have you made of that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
Earlier, you talked about Roosevelt and the first 100 days—it is often quoted. In the first 100 days, you have done some things and we have talked about the strategy on external affairs and relentless focus on outcome. As a broad overview, what do you see as the key challenges in your role as permanent secretary? I do not mean in reporting to ministers; I mean organisationally. A fresh perspective is good. What do you see as your key opportunities?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
My closing remark is that I am a bit surprised that you have not included more around organisational challenges. Someone brought up silo working, culture, risk appetite, innovation, use of technology and so on. I am conscious of time, but will you briefly tell me whether you will be writing an overarching strategy paper? What you are describing is operational, but I am talking about systemic, organisational change. Many of those challenges are inherent in business organisations and in public sector organisations, particularly the use of artificial intelligence. Do you produce something like that in your role as permanent secretary?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
Good morning and thank you very much for attending. I agree that your CV is remarkable; indeed, when I was preparing for today, I wanted to go away and read a lot of your articles, but I simply did not have time.
I have a few questions. What time commitment are you able to give to the role and what challenges do you see to that time commitment?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Michelle Thomson
I am on the record as expressing my frustration that quite a lot of people have a fundamental lack of knowledge about macroeconomic policy. The focus tends to be, particularly from a scrutiny perspective, on what we need to count and account for. How will you be able to use your extensive knowledge—this goes back to John Mason’s point—to create more general knowledge among the populace about the importance of macroeconomic frameworks and policy, and knowledge that, as Dr Lombardi said, our current policy levers can address only some of that? How can you help to heighten and broaden the thinking among the Scottish populace, not least among those in the Scottish Parliament?
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