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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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I was going to come to that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
As an aside, I will say that that is an incredibly helpful insight for the member’s bill that I am in the process of drafting, so thank you very much.
Do you have a view on the frequency of the use of Henry VIII powers and secondary powers? Is it going up, or is it about the same? Are there differences in the approach that you see, especially given your 25 years of experience?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
In essence, you are saying that it is more important to look at the scope and effect of what is being legislated for, rather than the number of particular instances or clauses, because then you are just counting—
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is really helpful. On a side note, it is always interesting to look at how the machinery of the UK Government interacts with that of devolved Governments, so having people at that interface is useful.
You have both stated a number of times that the goal is to provide clear and understandable legislation. I have two specific questions on that. I note that the OPC has drafting guidance. First, how is that set out? Secondly, we heard from the previous witnesses that, when legislation sets out powers in secondary legislation, it is sometimes not at all clear what ministers will do with those powers. Are such scenarios caught in the guidance or your broader practice? Is there a point at which you say, “We cannot tell what this legislation is going to do. Is this the right thing to do in terms of setting it and framing it in secondary legislation?”
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Have you noticed anything different in the approach to and practice in drafting, specifically with regard to secondary legislation and legislative powers?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
This has been an excellent discussion. The observation was made that making a hard distinction between things that are framework bills and things that are not is not as helpful as thinking about how powers are framed. Also, this is as much about practice and culture as it is about drafting. Those are my takeaways. I am really grateful to the witnesses for their contributions.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That brings me neatly on to my substantive questions. I want to look at the practical changes that we could bring into parliamentary procedure around framework legislation as a whole. As the panel has observed, it is better to think about the provisions in legislation and the powers that could be conferred on the executive, rather than trying to decide whether the legislation as a whole is over the line or not.
I was very interested in one proposal in the written submissions that we got, which was about having some sort of written agreement or guidance between the legislature and the executive. I think that both Dr Grez Hidalgo and Dr Fox had similar proposals in their submissions. Dr Fox described it as being a “Concordat on Legislative Delegation”. Will you explain what features that should have? Would that contain the principles that I alluded to in my earlier supplementary question? What did the Hansard Society have in mind when it made that proposal?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I was planning to address that issue separately because I know that there are witnesses at this meeting who disagree with the power to amend because of the consequential effects that it might have. I am interested in hearing witnesses’ views on whether sifting, more evidence taking and the possibility of amending would be sensible procedural changes to the way that secondary legislation is examined.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I suppose that my response is that the Pandora’s box has already been opened and there is a lot of legislation out there, so we need to deal with how Governments use it.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I agree. I will finish with this point, which was alluded to earlier. One of the interesting tests for a minister who is presenting legislation is whether, if a Government with a very different viewpoint was elected at the next election, it could use the legislation to do something that was very different from or even contrary to what was intended. Is that a relevant consideration here? Yes or no answers would be instructive.
I take it from the nods round the table that there is agreement on that, so I will hand back to the convener.
