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 1491 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Michael Marra
You will be under the same pressures.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Michael Marra
That is really useful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Michael Marra
David Page, you mentioned a blue-light review. I have seen reports in the press in recent days on the reaction of the Metropolitan Police to the rising tide of mental health problems. I go back to my point about external factors and adjusting public services. The Met’s response has been to say that it is no longer going to attend mental health crises. Do you think that we might see a similar response in Scotland?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Michael Marra
Based on the submissions and what has been said today, I am interested to hear what drives reform. We have heard about Brexit and there has been an awful lot of talk about budgets. The Scottish Government has to meet the budget gap and push reform using that budget. Are there other things that we want to achieve through that? Are we adapting to demographics, climate and technology, or only to the negative reactive drivers? Are we being strategic?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
I am hearing what is pretty welcome consensus among all of you—it was also in the submissions that we received—about a need for urgency. You have all described similar drivers for why that should happen. So far, I am hearing a pretty comprehensive rejection of the previous Deputy First Minister’s approach of saying, “We can just let folk get on with this.” There is recognition that there needs to be some kind of intent. I ask all of you why that is not happening and has not happened.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
I reject that slightly, because it feels to me that the nub of the question is this: what do you identify as being the restrictions that are preventing that from happening?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
Can I challenge you a little bit on that? The approach taken in Scotland to closing the attainment gap, for example, was to ring fence a certain amount of money to go into pupil equity funds rather than change the way that things were delivered. Where the approach worked, in the areas that the former First Minister went to study in London and New York, there was a significant policy change and a change in the way that public services were organised. She rejected that and went for a cash injection. Other places perhaps have more of an appetite for reform. Why was that choice made here?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Convener
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Apologies have been received from the committee’s new member, Keith Brown, who attended our past couple of meetings as substitute. On behalf of the committee, I put on record our thanks to Kenneth Gibson for his hard work and the support that he has given to the committee in his role as convener over the past two years.
The first item on our agenda is to choose a new convener. Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as convener of the committee. I ask any member to make a nomination.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
I want to push you a little bit on what you said earlier about innovation in our response to Covid. One issue related to the availability of methadone for people with drug and substance addictions. They could take it home rather than having to attend a chemist, and that became far more widespread. Part of my worry about that policy is its elasticity, because things have bounced back. Is there a reason why our system has pulled back from such innovations and is now saying that, in fact, we want to retreat back to the norm?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Michael Marra
My final question is about your sense of those fundamental blockages. I agree with Alison Payne; I do not think that Scots are averse to reform and change. There is absolutely nothing in our national character or the way that we do things to suggest that; it is something in our politics and structures. Is there anything that is changing those blockages at the moment, or is there potential for change? You have talked about increasing demand, but is there something to give us some hope that there might be a change in the political and structural set-up?
