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
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I notice that there is a Whitehall transfer of £24.5 million to increase Scotland’s share of the immigration health surcharge that is collected by the Home Office. Can you tell us more about that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I have one other question. You touched on the issue of further decisions on allocations being announced when the spring budget revision comes forward. Can you update us on any change to the balance that is available for deployment and allocation in future with regard to the reserved balance that we have now?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I have a question for Professor Roy, unless anyone else wants to come in, about an issue that we have covered only briefly. In your submission, you say that
“there needs to be more of a focus upon empowerment, particularly at a local level”,
and you ask about the reforms that are “hindering progress”. To what extent do people in communities want to be empowered? Do people want to have that level of responsibility? My experience from 30 years as an elected representative is that most people just want services to work efficiently and effectively. A minority want to be empowered and to have more say in their community, but a lot of people just want to get on with their lives. They want the rubbish to be collected—that is a pertinent point at the moment—and they want street lights to work, no potholes on the roads, good schools and a working NHS.
To what extent is empowerment a reality in ordinary people’s lives? How do we ensure that empowerment does not just mean passing down responsibilities, in a town of 10,000 people, to 20 to 30 people who might go to a monthly meeting?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Communities can include thousands of people, but we are talking as though they have a collective view. I think that you mean that a number of people are vocal in those communities. Is that what you mean? We can compare that with elected representatives, who have probably been elected by several thousand people in those communities.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I think that participatory budgeting has been a really big success, for example.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Unless our witnesses have any further points that they wish to add on any area that they feel that we have not covered effectively, we will end on that positive note. Thank you for your evidence, which has been fascinating. I also thank members for their questions.
Without further ado, I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 12:59.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I find that, on something negative, there is often a large turnout at meetings but, for day-to-day things, a very small number of people in a community will be involved, and it is arguable whether they are representative. Do they produce things such as newsletters and updates to let people know what they are doing? How effective are they? The variance across Scotland is monumental. Some people will be first class and some less so. If we are serious about community empowerment, how do we deliver that and who do we deliver it to?
Professor Mitchell or Stephen Boyle might like to comment on that. You do not have to, but you can if you wish. Are you going to take the fifth amendment on this one, Jim?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much. I should also say that Ross Greer is unable to attend the meeting in person this morning, due to a Covid outbreak in his family, but I am pleased to say that he is joining us remotely.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Under item 3 we will take evidence from Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, Professor James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh, and Professor Graeme Roy, University of Glasgow. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.
Members have received a paper from the clerks setting out background information, along with written briefings from two of our witnesses, Professor Roy and Stephen Boyle. Before I open up to questions from the committee, I invite each witness to make a short opening statement. I would like Professor Mitchell to go first, because he has not provided a written statement. [Laughter.] That, by the way, was not in the script.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
You talked about the political will and, in his submission, Professor Roy said:
“There are huge institutional, practical, and political constraints in public service delivery.”
Is the issue that political parties fear the electoral consequences of such radical changes, is it to do with vested interests in the public sector or is it perhaps a combination of those issues? If you were to start the ball rolling from where we are at this time, where would the number 1 bottleneck be? I would like all the witnesses to answer that question.
