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 934 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Annual Report 2023-24
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Katy Clark
I am thinking about specific cases that I have been involved with, and I am trying to understand whether there is a more general issue of inconsistency. Centralisation may mean that there are specialist staff who have very good skills in dealing with complaints, but are you concerned that they are not the only players in the process? Is that something that you have looked at or have views on?
Criminal Justice Committee
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Annual Report 2023-24
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Katy Clark
Yes, I am.
Criminal Justice Committee
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Annual Report 2023-24
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Katy Clark
That is fine. Thank you very much.
10:45Criminal Justice Committee
Policing Vulnerable People
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Katy Clark
Cabinet secretary, you have spoken this morning about a number of workstreams and action plans. As somebody who is not involved in that, I sometimes find it quite difficult to understand the terrain. You have made clear the commitment to whole-system approaches and to partnership work.
As I understand it, the Scottish Government established a mental health and capacity reform programme to address the recommendations from the Scottish mental health law review. That programme does not sit under the justice portfolio. Indeed, much of the work will sit outside justice, although it obviously has a massive impact in relation to your responsibilities. Will you say a bit more about the work under the reform programme to deliver the recommendations of the Scottish mental health law review, about your oversight role and about the extent to which it relates to other parts of Government?
Criminal Justice Committee
Policing Vulnerable People
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Katy Clark
You wrote to the committee in August in relation to the mental health and wellbeing strategy and the delivery plan. It would be extremely helpful if the committee could be kept advised not only of the work on the delivery plan that you have referred to with regard to the reform programme, but of whether this actually sits under justice. After all, we have to ensure that there is ministerial drive on this. I have to say, though, that it sounds as if you are not concerned about things falling through the cracks because some of the responsibilities do not lie within your remit. Do you still feel able to have oversight and to ensure that, on the subject of policing vulnerable people that we are looking at today, action is being taken as quickly as possible to implement policy?
Criminal Justice Committee
Policing Vulnerable People
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Katy Clark
Thank you. That is reassuring. I wonder whether Robby Steel or David Hamilton would like to comment.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Katy Clark
Given what you have said, I think that it is fair to say that you feel that you have strong statistical data and that the Scottish Government has provided the administrative data that you require to develop a robust costing. We look forward to your report in January.
Will you tell us how far ahead you are able to make forecasts? The two-child limit policy affects only children born since 2017 and will not be fully rolled out until 2035. Once a policy is introduced, it can be very difficult to withdraw it, so we need to make decisions for the long term. We do not know what will happen with the UK Government’s policy position on the issue, but if the Scottish Government were to take that on for the long term, how far ahead are you able to forecast? We need to be able to understand the long-term implications of any policy decisions.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Katy Clark
Thank you. I have no doubt that the committee will come back to that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Katy Clark
The report in January will give us forecasts only for the next five years. Is that correct?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Katy Clark
Will you give an indication of when the longer-term forecasts—that is, those that go beyond five years—might be incorporated into your work programme and when we can get that information? Are we likely to get that information by next summer? You are doing other work; I do not know whether you are able to programme that in now.
