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 1894 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is helpful.
My final question is for Peter, and it is about the interaction between parties and petitions. Political parties, for various reasons, will throw the kitchen sink at some recall petitions. Do you have any administrative concerns about the relationship between the work that parties do to seek a particular outcome and that of parties that are seeking an alternative outcome? Is there anything that we should consider from the experiences with previous petitions? How does that experience feed into the relationship between the parties and the petitions officer?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is excellent. Jenny, do you have any comments in response to that question?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is fine—it is why I asked the question.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
On the understanding that I neither agree nor disagree with the proposal, there is a tension between the information that this committee may want to have in order to reach a decision and how the data needs to be obtained and handled and how long it is preserved for. A challenge exists in the fact that, in the real world, additional information will, no doubt, be available through social media and the opinions and views of people who allegedly have other information that is not being put forward. This committee—along with a number of others—spends a huge amount of time balancing those two aspects.
Then there is the challenge of the existence of things that become disclosable subsequently. Notwithstanding whether I agree or disagree with the proposal, a decision that this committee reaches on such a point would at some stage invariably have to go to the chamber for validation, because we are subservient to the chamber in that regard. The amount of information that then becomes available in respect of that challenges all strong efforts to retain data on the smallest number of people and for the shortest period of time.
I am asking you the impossible question, and you know that it is coming. How do we reconcile the tensions? In reality, information will get out there that could be particularly harmful to an individual MSP but that has been handled as well as it possibly can be under GDPR. Is there a danger that, in achieving that, we defeat the purpose of what we are trying to do? On paper, that is relatively straightforward: it is whether there is an explanation for why someone has not been in attendance.
Discuss. [Laughter.]
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I am sorry, but I am going to rudely cut across you. What the bill is asking us to decide is whether there is a reason for someone not having been present for 180 days. In a sense, it is not about putting the record straight. If other information comes out, the bill does not say that we need to put the record straight. We can sit within that remit of just saying, “This is our view.”
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I will come back on a couple of points. The petition itself is simply about going in and saying, “As an individual, I’m putting my name here for the recall.” In the—thankfully relatively limited—examples of recall petitions in the United Kingdom, have there been any challenges with regard to delivery? Have people wanted to indicate, “No—I don’t want a recall to take place”?
At the moment, you walk through the door of wherever the petition is being signed and everyone knows which way you are voting. Have you had any administrative challenges in that regard or experiences as to how that plays out in real time? I ask Peter Stanyon to respond first.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Therefore, it is not insurmountable in the sense of it being such a big challenge that we should not go there.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Peter Stanyon, are there alternatives that we should have on the horizon rather than the recall that is proposed?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
In the North Antrim example, one thing that was pointed out was the relatively small number of locations in which the petition could be signed in some areas in comparison with others. Is it important that the bill contains clarification and certainty on that point, potentially giving a minimum and maximum number of places in which to sign the petition? I accept that those are not polling stations, but would that be an important step in giving a level of credence to the petition system? It would also avoid having people who object pointing out that something like the North Antrim scenario has occurred.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Thank you for that.
