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 1216 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
My final point is about the relationship between Government and civil service. Permanent secretary, you have good knowledge of the Westminster situation and will be well aware that there were issues with that relationship down south. Had it not been for Covid, there would have been further investigation into the relationship, which is critical.
In Scotland, there are now question marks over the relationship between Government and civil service. As you know, a few weeks ago, a senior civil servant was sent out to the media to bat on behalf of Scottish Government ministers about a particular issue. That puts into question whose job it is to defend or, in some cases, promote particular Government policies. Is it appropriate for a senior civil servant to be sent out to the media, as was the case for Professor Jason Leitch, to defend a particular decision in which there is a question mark over a ministerial action?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
To clarify that point, are you suggesting that the civil service requires additional resources to ensure that it can do its job properly and effectively? You mentioned that the part of the inquiry about why the events happened might reflect institutional issues. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
Good morning, Dr Lombardi. You have correctly identified that forecasting is by no means an exact science—I could not agree more with that comment. From your international expertise and considerable experience, do you believe that there are countries around the world where the accuracy of forecasting is a little better, because of the modelling that is used? Would we be able to apply some of the best practice to what the Scottish Fiscal Commission does?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
That is very helpful. One of the bigger challenges is about the timescale and the lag between the different sets of statistics coming out, albeit that they are independent. The committee has certainly had some difficulty with that challenge, in that witnesses have given evidence to the committee arguing that their job is very difficult because of that time lag. It is an interesting challenge.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
You have said that communication is absolutely key. Included in that, would you say that there is scope for better communication between the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Scottish Fiscal Commission? Are there areas of that communication, which is obviously critical to the economic analysis, that could be improved?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
You were.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
Is there any scope to reduce the timescales between the two sets of forecasts, which obviously are extremely important and have huge implications for economic policy making? Would you like some effort to be made to reduce the timescale?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
I have three questions if I may, permanent secretary, all very much on the theme of transparency, which we have just been discussing. You have been up front about your belief that what happened over the ferry issue was regrettable. You and Ms Fraser have outlined what steps are being taken to ensure that that does not happen again.
From what you have read, why do you think there was a problem of missing documentation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
Thank you. I was not asking you to reflect on the individuals concerned.
If we are going to ensure that this does not happen again and that the processes that are being put in place are much more robust, it is surely important to understand exactly what went wrong, not just in the ferries situation but in relation to the other issues to which Mr Johnson has referred. Audit Scotland has been on this trail for quite some time, saying that there is not enough transparency in the Scottish Government.
One of our regrets as a committee is that we did not interview your predecessor, and I hope that you can understand why we wanted to. We wanted to get to the hard facts about why the ferries situation happened—not the implications of what has happened since, but why it happened then. I hope that you can understand that a very important part of moving forward is having a good-quality understanding of why documentation was missing and of what can be done to ensure that that never happens again. Do you accept that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Liz Smith
I asked the question because, if we measure forecasting over a period of time, some countries appear to my mind to be more accurate, shall we say, than others. I am interested to know why that is. However, that is perhaps for another day.
One of the challenges that this committee comes across, as do many policy makers in Scotland, is that we are presented with two sets of forecasting—namely, that of the Scottish Fiscal Commission and that of the Office for Budget Responsibility—and there is a time lag between them, which can complicate things. When we get one set of statistics, other things can happen by the time we get the next set. Will you tell us a bit about how you intend to address that issue?
