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 2078 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I have one quick question. Thank you very much for being here. It has been an extremely informative session.
I was particularly taken by Lynda Towers’s compelling articulation of the considerations of different types of rights. As you know, we spoke to the permanent secretary in our earlier session. The committee has struggled to get people to think beyond their own silos—they think that their commission or commissioner is good—and look at things across the piece. My question is for Lynda Towers only. If the Government is advocating for the creation of a particular commissioner, how should things be looked at across the piece, as you so clearly articulated?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I am sorry, but other members want to come in.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
If you do not mind me interrupting, the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill is a good example, because of the uncertainty of funding. It is more appropriate to concentrate on bills where there is not that same uncertainty. For example, with the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, I recognise that the bill team and the minister did a lot of work to address our concerns around the FM and so on, but we still face the risk that there will be a considerable uptick in spend that the Parliament and members will have much more limited opportunity to scrutinise. The details that you have outlined were about how you will monitor and the general governance. That may well address your concern, but it does not address our concern as to how we scrutinise things. What risks therein have you articulated and how are you managing them?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I certainly look forward to hearing from you, with a focus on the generic risks and so on rather than the specific ones, because we are seeing a pattern emerging.
I will move on. I want to ask your thoughts on an issue relating to the emergency budget review. I have previously raised a question about the moneys from the ScotWind auction being used for day-to-day revenue. From the point of view of fiscal sustainability, is the fact that the £700 million and the £56 million have been folded in a lost opportunity to start to embed more fiscal sustainability?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I think that what you are articulating is that there is a renewed appetite for such reform. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
That goes back to the convener’s point. Let us have something a little more specific than “making progress”.
10:30Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you very much. That is very clear.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
The fundamental point is that in no way will that scrutiny be to the same level of detail as the committee would apply on an FM up front. We often go through things line by line and say, “This is what it started off at, and this is now what it has arrived at.” That is exactly my point. How are you assessing, managing and mitigating the risk of a diminished amount of parliamentary scrutiny once we have been through the process? Setting aside some of the issues with that particular FM, the point applies generally when you are using agile methodologies. From your response, I am not entirely clear exactly how you are assessing, quantifying and mitigating that risk from a parliamentary perspective.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Aggregates Tax and Devolved Taxes Administration (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
Arguably, the UK Government should be using such measures much more frequently. I am on record commenting in this Parliament that an estimated £262 billion is lost to UK gross domestic product every year as a result of tax avoidance, money laundering and so on, which I think rather puts that into context.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 16 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I note the cabinet secretary’s reference to the German firm RWE. Could the cabinet secretary briefly outline how that company’s proposals for a hydrogen site in place of the Grangemouth refinery would help to fulfil at least part of the Scottish Government’s just transition plan?
