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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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you. Dr Fox, would you like to comment on this?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you. I am slightly conscious of time. Would it be all right if I passed over to Edward Mountain, Mr Doris? Your question was pretty well covered.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you, Dr Fox. I am very conscious of time. Both of your contributions have been incredibly useful and valuable. I thank you both for your attendance today and I hope that you follow our inquiry, if not simply to learn a little bit more about the Scottish Parliament perhaps to find a way in which another legislature is looking at the hybrid Parliament and how we move forward. I once again express our thanks for your attendance this morning.
I suspend the meeting briefly so that we can change over witnesses.
09:55 Meeting suspended.09:58 On resuming—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Dr Childs?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
That was helpful. Did you want to respond, Dr Williamson?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Bob Doris will develop the conversation.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Welcome back to our second evidence session on future parliamentary procedure and practice. I welcome Dr Sarah Childs from the Royal Holloway, University of London, and Dr Andy Williamson from Democratise, who is joining us online. I thank you for your attendance this morning. My intention is to move straight to questions from the committee in the hope that we can develop a conversation about certain themes that have come through in the evidence that we have received so far. I will pass you both into the more than capable hands of Collette Stevenson.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
Dr Childs, we will hear from you first.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
I thank our second panel of witnesses for a very informative session. I hope that you continue to follow our inquiry with interest. We will, no doubt, bombard you with questions on various matters in due course.
On behalf of the committee, I once again thank Professor Childs for attending in person and I thank Dr Williamson, whom we managed, with technology allowing and the sheep and lambs being in the right place, to see very clearly by the end.
We now move into private session.
10:49 Meeting continued in private until 11:14.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Future Parliamentary Procedures and Practices
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Martin Whitfield
That is interesting. The problem does not lie in the formulaic way in which legislation is created or in which committees sit but in the softer, challenging-to-measure interactions that happen face to face and in person that facilitate the greater ideal of producing legislation and getting work done.
