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 3346 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
I am listening very carefully to this, as I am a big fan of STV and have been a councillor who was elected under STV. If you are elected under STV—you can correct me if I have got you wrong—it means that people have had to vote for you individually, unlike those who are elected under the list system, which includes you and me. Nobody voted to get me, personally, into the Scottish Parliament, but people have to vote for individual councillors. If you want to get re-elected, you have to work your socks off and prove to people that you deserve their vote.
The STV system establishes a link between the electors and the individual, not the party, and that is similarly true in a by-election. By not having a by-election, you get rid of that and almost go back to the party list system, which puts the power into the hands of parties. That seems to me to be entirely wrong.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
Thank you, convener. I will start by saying that the value of stage 2 is having the ability to raise issues such as the ones that my three amendments raise. The issues have not come out of the blue; they have come up before. Dual mandate was mentioned in the committee’s report, which was very good, and, when I spoke in the stage 1 debate, I was very honest—as I always am—in saying that there are different views on dual mandate, including in my party, but it is entirely right that we have a discussion about that.
If you will permit me, I have from the Scottish Parliament information centre a list of MSPs who have had dual mandate. The list is available to anyone. I am going to go through that list all the way from session 1, because people will find it interesting. It is quite a long list, and it is going to take me a bit of time, but I will read more quickly than I normally speak.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
Will you take an intervention?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
I thank the minister for taking an intervention. As he said, we have discussed this matter, and he copied me into the letter that he sent to the committee. When might the minister launch a consultation on dual mandates, if he plans to do that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
Is there a danger that, with all these welcome consultations, it could look like the Government is trying to park issues and kick them into the long grass? I think that Ben Macpherson is right that, if the matters are not dealt with in the bill, we might need another bill in the next session of Parliament, and it could be many years before there is any action on the issues.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
Have you seen that deep-dive exercise in any detail?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
Other than WICS, which we know about—our work on it is continuing—have any other bodies been flagged up as being of concern?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
WICS is one of 43 non-departmental public bodies. Have you done any work to assess whether we are getting value for money from all those bodies and whether there is any overlap between what some of the bodies do? Is there any merit, in terms of value for money, to amalgamating any of them?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
I just found it fascinating.
In session 1, a number of MSPs were also members of the House of Lords: James Douglas-Hamilton, David Steel and Mike Watson. As you would expect, quite a lot of MSPs were also MPs in session 1. The list is as follows: Malcolm Chisholm, Roseanna Cunningham, Donald Dewar, Margaret Ewing, Sam Galbraith, Donald Gorrie, John Home Robertson, John McAllion, Henry McLeish, Alasdair Morgan, Alex Salmond, John Swinney, Jim Wallace and Andrew Welsh.
In session 2, a couple of MSPs were members of the House of Lords—James Douglas-Hamilton and Mike Watson. I do not see any who were also MPs during that session, but we start to see councillors coming through. Those who were MSPs and councillors were Andrew Arbuckle, Charlie Gordon and Mike Pringle.
In session 3, a number of MSPs were members of the House of Lords: George Foulkes, Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen. Some MSPs were MPs: Margaret Curran, Cathy Jamieson and Alex Salmond. The ones who were councillors in session 3 were Willie Coffey, Jim Hume, Bill Kidd, John Wilson, Nigel Don and—apologies, as I cannot pronounce the name—Stefan Tymkewycz.
The list for session 4 is quite long. The list of MSPs who were also in the Lords consisted of Annabel Goldie. The list of MSPs who were councillors was as follows: George Adam, Clare Adamson, Jayne Baxter, Colin Beattie, Lesley Brennan, Neil Bibby, Willie Coffey, Mary Fee, Neil Findlay, John Finnie, Mark Griffin, Cara Hilton, Jim Hume, Alison Johnstone, Colin Keir, Richard Lyle, Angus MacDonald, Derek Mackay, Hanzala Malik, Mark McDonald, Margaret McDougall, Anne McTaggart, John Pentland, Alex Rowley, Kevin Stewart, David Torrance, Jean Urquhart and Bill Walker.
In session 5, the MSPs who were also MPs at some point were Douglas Ross and Ross Thomson. The list of MSPs who were also councillors is actually a very long list, so I will not go through it, but I think—
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Graham Simpson
The cabinet secretary has been actively looking at the issue for long enough. I have provided her with a solution, which we discussed in private. I will keep it that way, but is it not time that she makes a decision and removes the ban?
