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: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That is great. Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I am the very handsome and charismatic one. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I notice that there is a head of the policy profession who is responsible for improving the policy system—its capabilities, processes and standards—and helping to improve the outcomes that they contribute to, including higher quality policy advice, better Government decisions and better outcomes for people in New Zealand. Our briefing on the Policy Project goes on to say that
“a sample of policy advice papers is assessed by a panel”.
Do you have an example of how that has worked in practice? How do you ensure objectivity, as opposed to subjectivity, in that process?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That concludes questions from colleagues. I have just one more question to finish off. There are a number of similarities between Scotland and New Zealand, in terms of parliamentary structure. Obviously, the populations are not too different.
You have 120 members and we have 129. You have been a unicameral Parliament since 1951 and we are a unicameral Parliament. You have select committees and we have committees, and your committees interrogate policy and ministers as ours do. How effective do you feel that the select committee structure is in doing that, and if you could put in place one change to make the process more effective—if you believe that a change is necessary—what would it be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, we can. I apologise. I think that you were cut off when you were responding to John Mason.
We were hoping that the evidence session would only go on until 10.10, but three members have yet to speak and we have lost more than 20 minutes because of interruptions. Would it be possible to extend our session a wee bit?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I will have to suspend the session as we have lost the connection. I apologise, John.
10:07 Meeting suspended.10:11 On resuming—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I am sorry, Diane. You were cut off in mid-flow.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Okay. John Mason, can you remind us what you were asking about?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
In your presentation, you touched on the long-term insights briefing, which you said is produced at least once every three years. One of the key points of that is that the public can contribute to future decision making, helping the country to collectively think about and plan for the future. I realise that the act was only passed in 2020, and we have had the pandemic since then, but is there any evidence or are there any signs that that has transpired or is starting to happen?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I will ask only one more question, then I will open out the session to colleagues round the table. On Sunday, a book called “How Westminster Works ... and Why It Doesn’t” by a man called Ian Dunt was reviewed in The Sunday Times. It was interesting that the review talked about a technique that the civil service at Westminster has called boxing-in. That is a situation in which, allegedly, civil servants give ministers four or five options, all but one of which are completely bonkers, and one of which is sensible, in order to try and channel the minister into taking a particular decision. The article pointed out that Liz Truss broke that technique when she was Prime Minister by always going for one of the mad options. Generally speaking, it is a serious issue, because it means that ministers are corralled in certain directions. Does that take place in New Zealand? Do you have experience of that?
