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 1489 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have just a couple of quick questions, because I know that we are coming to the end of the session.
Permanent secretary, you have been in post since 2022, as you have pointed out, and you have been able to make a pretty fair assessment of what you noticed at the start. What now keeps you awake at night, and why?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Yes—to get some flavour of that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
You have just commented on the volume of responses, rather than the quality. My point is that, in that significant volume, which I absolutely do not doubt, nobody at any point thought it that was appropriate to look at the impact on women who have been sexually assaulted—a huge percentage of women, as you will know—or raped, of having fully intact men in their safe spaces. That says to me that something was not right with the process, risk assessment and decision making. Do you accept that or am I missing something? Do you accept that, clearly, something was not quite right with the processes? It is not about volume of responses, it is about quality.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thank you. The general question—which, in fairness, I do not expect you to be able to answer today—is whether there is a possibility that some of those types of bodies that receive Scottish Government funding get more than 50 per cent of their income stream that way. In fairness to you, I do not expect you to know that data for every single organisation.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Okay, so my next question is where that would be declared by the Scottish Government and/or the civil service as a risk in terms of your decision making. I fully accept that it is a risk for the organisations, because of exactly what you highlighted, but it also represents a risk to both the civil service and the Scottish Government, if a number of bodies are receiving more than 50 per cent of their funding from you. Perhaps the permanent secretary would like to come in and say where in the institutional memory, if you like, that would be declared, understood and assessed.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I was expecting the tradition of the convener going first to be in operation, but okay. We will just go in with the heavy brogues, then.
My question might well be for the cabinet secretary. I am interested in exploring whether any third sector groups obtain more than 50 per cent of their funding from the Scottish Government.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
Permanent Secretary, do you have any final comments on that? Were you surprised at my comment?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I feel as though I have taken a great deal of time on this topic, so I want to let other colleagues in. Thank you both.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have a couple of quick questions off the back of what you have said. You talked about the speed of change, which everyone recognises is accelerating. How well equipped is the civil service, since you joined it, to deal with that speed of change, which ain’t going to stop any time soon, as we all know?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
You mentioned earlier, and I read in the stats, that more than 55 per cent of your employees are female, which is great. You also said that there is a very healthy gender balance at all levels. Do you have, or could you supply the committee with, a breakdown at all levels? I am particularly interested in the most senior levels.
I will make one last wee point. A wellbeing economy, which has a gendered lens as a focus, is, of course, a priority of the Scottish Government. I am aware of the time. You may want to give us some more flavour of how you are able to apply that, because it is obviously about so much more than simply the percentage of the gender split. We could start to look at procurement and so on. It depends on time, convener.
