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 376 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
I am an optimist rather than a cynic—as I am sure that everyone would agree from their experience of interacting with me. I genuinely struggle to see how those circumstances would happen. However, you are right, Ms Webber, to caution and suggest that there is potential for a political party to encourage the disbarment and removal of one of its members for wider reasons of perception. You never know—I suppose that it is a possibility.
The wider point is how we can ensure that there is minimal politicisation at the appropriate part of the process. That speaks to the mechanism that would trigger the recall mechanism.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
I appreciate that. I will avoid commenting on specific cases because of the territory that that would take us into. That point will inform our considerations—we should not be naive and pretend that it will not—but we must consider the proposition without reference to specific cases. I suppose that it is possible. I struggle to see how the process could take account of that, but there might be a means. We will see whether one can be devised.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
We only posit the question as something that you might like to explore. I have gone into the specifics of it, but that is the fundamental question. We have talked about parity. Why would there be a subdivision requirement in relation to regional MSPs but no such requirement in relation to constituency MSPs?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
We will need to reflect on what is recommended. It is merely an observation. On the fundamental question, as I set out, parity of esteem for those who are elected here is an important principle, but parity of process—as much as we can achieve it—is important as well.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
We have no opinion on that at this stage.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
Those are things that we would need to consider.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
It does not entirely rest with us, of course, because we do not control the law around the regulatory period for UK elections. That is where it becomes difficult. The expenditure on elections here then interacts with that part, which we do not control; throwing petitions into the mix would mean that we would have to consider things further.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
We will of course have to consider that. However, the point that I really make to the committee is that, in considering the issue, there will still be limits to what we might be able to do at the other end.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
Yes.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jamie Hepburn
There are a few issues at play. The first thing that I would set out, as a general perspective, is that, where it is possible, people should be in the Parliament. Whether there is a need to be prescriptive and to make it a matter that might lead to someone’s disbarment is a wider question. However, as a general principle, I think that we all recognise and understand that, if people do not have a good reason not to be here, they should be here on a fairly regular basis, accepting that Mr Simpson’s proposition is that, if people have a good reason, they will not fall foul of the requirement. That is a general observation, rather than a comment on whether that requirement should become part of the process by which someone could be disbarred.
It might be helpful to have a list of acceptable reasons for a person being allowed not to be here. The challenge, which could be accounted for by saying that it is a non-exhaustive list, is that things could arise that we consider to be legitimate reasons but which we had not foreseen and prescribed as legitimate reasons. We could deal with that by different means: the list could be updated or, as I said, we could say that the list was non-exhaustive.
I concede that it is inevitable that the requirement could have an impact on specific cohorts. It is not for me to speak to Mr Simpson’s bill, but, to be fair to him, that is why he has suggested that, if someone has a good reason not to be here, they would not be disbarred.
However, there are some fundamental questions, because the requirement is predicated specifically on physical attendance. Putting aside my personal perspective, which is that people should be here when they can be, we have embedded in our system the ability to participate remotely by digital means—I think that that has been a good thing—and we do not draw a distinction in that regard in relation to a person’s ability to participate in proceedings. If we do not draw a distinction in that regard, a reasonable question might be why we are now saying that, in any six-month period, a member must have been here in person. That question needs to be considered. Again, the Government does not have a perspective on that, so I am merely suggesting that these are questions that need to be considered.
The other fundamental thing that needs to be considered is who the gatekeeper is who will determine whether a reason is legitimate. In effect, for proxy votes, that is the Presiding Officer, but who it should be in this instance is another question.
