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 1084 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
Good morning. An issue that has been put to us by people who have given evidence so far is that one of the reasons for the proposals to increase the number of commissioners is that there have been failures in public services, which have resulted in new demand. I am sure that Ms Haughey will be aware of the Eljamel case. I can cite on-going examples of where public health services have failed former patients of Eljamel. I am sure that the forthcoming public inquiry will uncover some of that.
Ms Nicoll, some would argue that the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill was introduced because of pressures on the existing police forces, which are not able to do some of the things that we would like them to be able to do. To what extent do you feel that the people who have given evidence to our committee so far have a fair point about failures in public services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
At the moment, we are looking at the effectiveness of the commissioner landscape. When it comes to the particular commissioners, the statistics on what is happening to children and young people just now—whether those are about poverty, attainment or those who are able to fight their case, which is a difficult thing for children and young people to do—are not terribly impressive in showing that we are doing a better job for young people. That is, therefore, quite a challenge. As a committee, we have to identify whether that situation has come about because the commissioners are not doing a very good job or because public services are failing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
That is a very interesting reflection. In some cases, there might have been human error, with the people who were responsible for overseeing a case not having done their job effectively, but there could be system failure, too. In some ways, that is the more interesting point, because that might need legislative changes. What are your reflections on whether we should spend more time trying to address failures in existing public services or whether we should create more commissioners?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
Ms Webber, do you think that the increasing demands on the children’s commissioner have come about because of a failure within the education system?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
The previous commissioner gave evidence to the committee about this gap, which is important in this debate because the gap matters. It matters in the lives of children and young people and it matters to the conclusions that we come to about whether the oversight that the commissioner has is the problem or whether the problem is a failure within the system.
Mr Whitfield, you represent two completely different scenarios here because Ms Webber deals with a commissioner whose main interest is advocacy and, Mr Whitfield, as you rightly said, you deal with regulation and investigation. Do those differences commissioners’ roles change the public perception of whether they are successful?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
Can you give us some examples of where there has been a huge gap between the delivery and what was promised?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
Ms Haughey, you gave a very sensible response to the convener’s question about democratic accountability. As well as examining costs, which is obviously our meat and drink on this committee, we believe that the accountability line is very important. I now have far more experience of the health side of things because of my interest in the Eljamel case, and it seems to me that there was so much buck passing—it was always somebody else’s problem—which left so many distressed patients at their wits’ end, given all the trauma that they had faced. If we are to ensure that there are better public services, we have to decide how best to ensure that there is accountability in the system. I am interested in your views on how that could happen in the health brief.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Liz Smith
Thank you, both.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Liz Smith
I do not disagree; that is exactly what is laid down in standing orders. The problem is with the timing. That is the difficulty that we are facing. The proposal is that the committee should scrutinise updated figures after stage 2. I think that I can speak for most committee members when I say that we are not satisfied by that because, as I said, it renders our job pretty much impossible.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Liz Smith
We all have to abide by standing orders—they are the rules of the Parliament.
