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
Are there any other views on that?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is a really helpful insight. Just to—
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I was just going to collapse into the next area about dealing with the specific powers—-
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Okay.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Many of my questions have been touched on, so what I say might be a little repetitious. However, I will try to avoid that.
First of all, though, I would like to start almost from the beginning and understand your roles a bit more. You are both lawyers who sit in the Cabinet Office and work across Whitehall departments. Do you typically work directly with ministers and other civil servants? Can you describe the function of your office and how you interact with other parts of Government?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
What I am really interested in is whether there is any possibility of sharing best practice. Obviously the jurisdictions are different, but drafting is drafting and, in a sense, lots of different people are seeking to do the same job of translating policy intent into good law. Is there any possibility of sharing best practice, both generally and more specifically with regard to delegated and Henry VIII powers? I keep saying “Henry VIII” but that is, as the previous panel pointed out, a pejorative term, so perhaps I should say “powers to amend primary legislation”. To what extent does the possibility of sharing best practice exist, and to what extent is there a possibility of exploring that in the future?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That certainly raises an interesting point for me, given that the Scottish Government and, I would imagine, the Welsh Government are former Government departments. Do you have interactions with lawyers from devolved Administrations or do you interact purely with Whitehall departments? I recognise that such interactions might be on a slightly different basis, but if you do have those contacts, in what circumstances do they arise?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Finally, I have one slightly cheeky question—well, it is not cheeky but it is slightly less formal. As two drafters speaking to a group of legislators, if you had one plea to legislators on what they should consider when they are thinking about turning policy into codified law, what might that be?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
I would like to know whether other witnesses think that guidance or a concordat is a practical solution. I also wonder whether the conclusion of the discussion that we have had this morning is that not just principles, but counterfactual tests, would be required. That is, is what will be done foreseeable and predictable? Are boundaries and parameters set?
Principally, do the other members of the panel agree that some sort of published document on how framework legislation or secondary powers will be used would be a helpful way forward, both at Holyrood and elsewhere?
