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 3406 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
John Mason
We will work on that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Budget (Website)
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
John Mason
I am convinced that you are trying to keep costs down and not spend. There is a balance to be found between preventative maintenance and a reactive approach.
I stress that it is important that this committee understands that a project is going to take longer, because in effect the committee is pre-approving what would normally be a year-by-year budget.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
Given that some of the information is for parliamentarians, some is for experts in organisations such as Audit Scotland and some is for the general public, is it impossible to produce something that will satisfy them all?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
I have one final question. I get the point that has been raised by others that civil servants are speaking for ministers. As I understand it, the permanent secretary is also the principal accountable officer and has some direct accountability to Parliament, under section 14 of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000. I think that you mentioned that yourself, especially in relation to the economic efficiency and effectiveness of the Scottish Administration. Do you see any tension between those two responsibilities?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
On a separate subject, can you say anything about workforce diversity in the civil service? I have heard the accusation—not about the civil service as such—that, because some parts of the public sector are so risk averse about favouring one group, sometimes there is not representation across the board. What is your feeling about the civil service in that regard?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
The figure on gender sounded quite good, but what about the gender pay gap? Do men still hold more senior positions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
I will build on questions that have been asked. I am interested in the point about communicating with the public, on not just the Fiscal Commission’s work but wider issues of tax and so on, in which it is difficult to get the public involved. I fully accept that you are a good communicator. Susan Rice, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, is also a good communicator. However, it is difficult. Should everyone in Scotland know about the Scottish Fiscal Commission? I do not think that that is the case at the moment. Should they know what it does? Where can we go with that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
I think that you accept that there is a big problem. I get frustrated, because so many people—intelligent people in trade unions, business and elsewhere—keep demanding that we spend more on something while saying, “Where the money comes from is nothing to do with us.” I hope that you can play a part in getting people to think about both sides of the balance sheet.
You made the point that you are well connected in Scotland. You have been a civil servant. Some people might say that that means that you will not be as independent as someone who comes in from outside. How do you answer that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
I am interested in the concept of information, particularly fiscal information, being more understandable rather than us getting more of it. You wrote to the Public Audit Committee on the need to improve the accessibility of information about public finances more broadly. Will you say a little more about the way that you see that going?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
John Mason
Clearly, the committee now has a public administration remit that we did not have before. To be honest, we are still finding our way into that. Does the committee have a role in looking at the civil service and suggesting improvements or anything like that?
