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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Of course.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
For our next agenda item, the committee will continue its inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making. Today we will hear from Dr Judith Turbyne, chief executive of Children in Scotland; Lucy Hughes, policy and parliamentary manager at Engender; Craig McLaren, director of Scotland, Ireland and English regions at the Royal Town Planning Institute Scotland; and Rachel Le Noan, policy and public affairs officer at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. I welcome you all to the committee.
I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for the session. If witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate that to the clerks and I can then call you. We already have your written submissions—thank you for those.
We will move straight to questions. I ask Michelle Thomson to begin.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
I will bring in Lucy Hughes to speak about this issue.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
We move to questions from John Mason.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
I do not want to place that as culture because the way that the process works clearly informs outcomes as well. However, it is not at the heart of decisions about where policies might be delivered. I am thinking about how medically assisted treatment standards and drug use might be applied in a rural area versus an urban area. Is there an impact? Does Engender work on such issues to try to inform the gendered nature of such decisions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Thank you for your evidence. We have gone slightly over time and I appreciate your forbearance, particularly with me at the end.
I think—[Interruption.] Bear with me a second while I look for the script. This is my first time convening a committee meeting, which you will have noticed.
We will continue taking evidence on effective Scottish Government decision making at our next meeting.
That concludes the public part of the meeting. The next item on our agenda, which will be discussed in private, is consideration of our work programme.
11:10 Meeting continued in private until 11:22.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Douglas Lumsden, do you want to come in with a specific supplementary question?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Yes, there is.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Do you not feel that that has been covered?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 2 May 2023
Michael Marra
Some of our earlier discussion was about trust between the Government and your organisations. I am also concerned about the public’s trust. We are talking about big policy regimes. For example, I am thinking about the Promise to care-experienced young people, where there is a real frustration with its lack of progress and it not being delivered, but there is political unanimity that it is the right thing to do. Do we risk the trust of organisations and the public if we set ambitious change directions but have not thought about how we might deliver them?
