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
“OECD Review of the Scottish Fiscal Commission 2025”
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for your time. It has been very helpful and we greatly appreciate the work that has gone into the very positive report.
Meeting closed at 12:19.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Why are those in two documents? Why is it not one document? Why is fiscal sustainability not in the medium-term financial strategy?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I thought so, but it is good if those things are pinned down and explained. That is a simple, straightforward explanation, but it is good to have milestones saying where we expect to be after one quarter, six months or nine months. That way, for transparency, we have a clearer picture of whether the Government is on track and how much it is saving.
Colleagues are keen to come in, but I want to ask you one more question, on financial memorandums. It is important to acknowledge that progress has been made on financial memorandums, but the committee has had a number of concerns about the financial memorandums that have been presented to us. They have been considerably out of date, frankly, and that has had significant implications for costings and, ultimately, our scrutiny.
A number of members’ bills have come to us, and I am wondering about the change in guidance. You have said that
“the Scottish Government should proactively write to the Committee as soon as it becomes aware of any significantly revised figures (including margins of uncertainty) for FMs during Stage 1 of a Bill’s passage.”
Will that apply to members’ bills as well as to Government bills?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
“OECD Review of the Scottish Fiscal Commission 2025”
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that. I will bring in colleagues around the table, starting with John Mason.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
We are doing our own investigation into that, because we feel that there might be conflicts of interest in how some inquiries are undertaken. For example, people might go to the media demanding the expansion of an inquiry in which they have a pecuniary interest.
I have a couple more questions on this topic and then we will conclude, because we are over time.
The AGS said in relation to performance reporting:
“While we recognise improvements have been made to the reporting in 2023/24, the performance report needs to be more transparent with a golden thread linking all aspects of performance and providing an overall view of progress. Without clear targets against which activity can be measured, it remains difficult to form an overall picture of the performance of the Scottish Government.”
He went on to say:
“Aligning funding to priorities is essential for effective decision making. The continuing revisions and development of policy limits the ability to be transparent, provide continuity and report achievement across the key priorities. There is an absence of clearly defined performance measures with measurable targets for all priority areas.”
Do you agree with that, and would you say that it is absolutely critical that measurable targets are included when looking at priority areas and how the Scottish Government delivers?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
In Estonia, they tend not to recruit so much from the private sector, but they have people from there working for six months in the civil service, and vice versa. They do a lot of that.
This has been a long session. I thank you for answering our questions. Do you want to make any further points before we wind up the session?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
“OECD Review of the Scottish Fiscal Commission 2025”
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
It is on page 21 of the report.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
“OECD Review of the Scottish Fiscal Commission 2025”
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
We have to put that into perspective as well. The Scottish Fiscal Commission might not be as good as the institutions in countries such as the Netherlands or, indeed, as good as the OBR, but it is a lot better than those in countries such as Finland, France, Germany, Portugal and Greece, as we can see from the list that you have on page 12 of your report.
I call Michelle Thomson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
But surely that is taken as read. To be honest, that is not really a priority for Government; it is just the nature of the position that you are in. The principle of serving the Government of the day would be taken as read wherever you were in the civil service structure, would it not? I do not want to put words into your mouth, but if you were Joe Griffin—if you were to remain in post—what three things would you like to see being achieved over, say, the next year or so?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You talked about how accountability for decision-making and the delivery of outcomes has moved to a dashboard rather than a system of mandate letters, which is what the previous First Minister was keen on. How does that new approach support transparency and what are its advantages?
