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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 385 contributions
|
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
Yes, that is right. The arbiter in the current system is the Parliament. By and large, that process has served us for a long time and, more often than not, it has served us well. Given that we are accountable to the public, in the sense of being elected here in the first place, if we are going to introduce a system of further deliberation on the standards of members of the Parliament, the same principle should apply that, ultimately, that should be in the hands of the public.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
We would need to look at it in relation to the bill as it advances, and consider how we might deal with it. I can safely say that the Government would be concerned about those areas. We should have a line of transparency about how much is being spent, who is spending it and where that money and expenditure is being derived from. These are important parts of our democratic system and we recognise that it is important when people are elected to the Parliament or in other parts of our democratic system. We should also recognise that it is important in relation to any recall process too.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
It might be. It is one of the challenges that we face; it is probably less of an issue here, although we would need to explore it further. A recall mechanism is a fairly clear and distinct process, but it is something that we would need to consider. If there were an election here and a general election for the United Kingdom Parliament in the same regulated period, expenditure in both those elections would start to interact, so the question is what would happen if there was a recall petition in that period.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
There will be a cost to all that. The Presiding Officer has already indicated that a financial memorandum would be required if this were to proceed into law so, yes, there will be costs throughout. If there is to be an education campaign—for want of a better term—that is a cost, and we will have to consider it.
You made the point that the additional member system is a facet of our electoral system here. In 1999, that was new, but people are largely used to it now and understand that they have two ballots to cast at the Scottish Parliament election. In 2007, we introduced the single transferable vote for elections to local authorities; I think that people are becoming used to that and understand the process of ranking candidates. What I am speaking to is that people are well used to becoming acquainted with developments in our electoral system.
I absolutely concede that, when this is introduced and if and when a specific petition comes in—although we all hope that it will not be required—part of the process must be about ensuring that people understand how it works precisely. By and large—and rightly—that work must be done through an external agency in the guise of the Electoral Commission rather than put in the hands of Government or Parliament, which might be perceived as being less independent.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
That is a question for the Parliament. That goes back to my perspective, which I think most of us would agree with, that members are still entitled to a degree of privacy in their personal lives, provided that the matter concerned does not relate to their public conduct and their work in the Parliament. The fact that we are publicly elected representatives does not completely do away with that right.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
I draw members’ attention to paragraphs 26 to 28 of the memorandum that we sent to the committee. The process in this regard becomes a little complicated. There might be a way to deal with that. However, in effect, as drafted, the criminal offence ground for a recall petition, which is set out in section 3, is triggered when an MSP receives any sentence of imprisonment or detention for not less than six months, including suspended sentences where the MSP is not imprisoned immediately, which, of course, might mean that they are not imprisoned at all. By contrast, if someone is sentenced for a shorter period than six months, they are then open to the process of recall, so there seems to be inconsistency.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
My only observation is that, if you are on remand, you have not yet been convicted.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
It is a good question, but it is not one that I have given any thought to.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
That is right, and I am pretty sure that questions about whether we have thought about increased costs in the future are put to the Government on a regular basis. Primarily, it is issues around future costs that drive our perspective on the financial memorandum.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
It would not fall on the local authority, but it would still fall on the public purse. It would mean that resource would have to be diverted from elsewhere.
