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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2186 contributions
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Oh—it is categories.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
That is very helpful. I appreciate your answers.
Digital imprints are quite a difficult area in terms of enforcement, are they not? Are we simply putting into primary legislation something that will ultimately be very difficult to enforce? Police Scotland has expressed concerns about any enforcement regime that is associated with the bill, given the nature of social media and so forth. How do you see the matter?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Right—and that is what the Government has asked for.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Who, then, should help the police with that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Right. That is a definite and clear answer. I think that I have probably covered what I wanted to cover.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Yes, it is just a quick question. You have made what seems like a very pragmatic suggestion about rolling reviews, but you also said that you suggested that to Scottish ministers and they clearly have not embraced it. Do you know why that idea, in your professional point of view, was not accepted by Scottish ministers?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
They are happy with it?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Yes. When do you begin prior to the deadline to complete it?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Right. Is that a 15-year review as well?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
How is that done at present?