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 1184 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Yes—that is correct. Agents of a public authority are normally employees who are carrying out a specific function of that public authority.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Some things have been included and some things have not, because we are trying to get a consensus. I might well have wanted to have more things in the bill that have not been put in, but we are trying to make proposals on issues where there was less controversy and more consensus among stakeholders.
You are talking about one of the areas not only where there was less consensus but where issues were raised about legislative competence. Therefore, the view was that it was probably better not to include it in the bill.
There are quite a few matters that we could have included in the bill but did not, because we thought that we might run into problems and that there would be different views. We have attempted to coalesce the proposals around areas that have broad support.
09:45Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Those issues could be raised at stage 2.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
The hope is that the bill will lead to culture change, where more information is proactively published. As the Information Commissioner outlined last week, the codes of practice would outline the type of information that it was useful for an organisation to publish, and he would work with the organisation in relation to that.
It is also hoped that that would lead to a reduction in the number of FOI requests and, therefore, that there would be savings as a result of that cultural change, because information would already be readily available. The Information Commissioner’s office says that we can often predict the kinds of FOI requests that are going to be made. If that information was proactively published, the public would not need to rely on the FOI mechanism.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
You are absolutely correct that the existing legislation requires that. Indeed, international law requires it, but the reality is that the system is not working well. The way that the legislation was framed in 2002 has meant that the system has not worked in the way that was envisaged. People who are actively involved in the sector believe that a proactive publication duty and very clear codes of practice and guidance from the Information Commissioner about what that actually means are far more effective. Indeed, that is how it is done in other countries, where it appears to be successful.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
In general, it would be a matter for committees themselves, but including the detail in the standing orders could be an option. It is the transparency of the process that would ensure whether it was robust. All stakeholders—the sector, private bodies, representative bodies and the Scottish Government—would be involved and would have the opportunity to make representations. It would be a far more transparent and, I would argue, robust process because of the public scrutiny that it would involve. However, it would be an additional mechanism; it would not be instead of the existing mechanisms.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
It is a hard question. Sometimes, the designation might be for only one small body that employs a relatively small number of people and does not work with a considerable amount of money; the Parliament might take the view, for political or other obvious reasons, that it should be compliant with the FOI legislation. At other times, the designation might be for a massive sector. Therefore, it is difficult to say, because it depends on the proposed designation, how much evidence is involved and how complex that is.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Very much so.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Yes. The bill was taken forward as a result of frustration with the Government’s failure to act. After a great deal of lobbying to try to get the Government to come forward with recommendations, Carole Ewart from the Campaign for Freedom of Information Scotland asked me whether I would be willing to take forward a member’s bill.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
I am concerned. The bill is in the same position as a number of members’ bills. That is not the fault of any individual member; unfortunately, the Parliament is not geared up to provide support to members. I would have preferred it if the bill had come before the committee earlier in the parliamentary session, but my view is that there is still time.
I have met with the Government a number of times over the years during the bill process, but I have not really had feedback until it made a submission to the committee last week. I have had a great deal of feedback from other stakeholders, and we reflected that in the drafting of the bill.
The original draft bill, which the Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland presented to me, has been amended quite substantially to take into account the views of stakeholders, including those who could be designated under the bill and the office of the Information Commissioner.
