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 2186 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
I have illustrated one example with regard to councillors. You might refer to that, to MSPs or to public bodies. How much of an improvement will there be in your key performance indicators in the report that we will be looking at a year from now?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
If there is time.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Yes—thank you, deputy convener. Jackie Dunbar made a point about delay, which I mentioned, too. What consideration do you give to the wellbeing of people who are on the receiving end of complaints? I am operating from a background of knowing some of the stresses that colleagues have gone through. In one case, the person concerned left public life, in effect. I do not think that I am saying anything that has not already been said in public by that person. I think that that was a disaster, because that person had so much to give. How much consideration do you give to the wellbeing of the people who are the subject of complaints?
10:15Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
That is a very strong suggestion. Based on the experience of colleagues, I think that that service is badly needed. We probably all have colleagues who have been through such experiences and have been left feeling diminished, which is exactly the opposite of what we have been talking about for the entirety of your evidence—namely, creating an environment in the public service that makes people want to come forward and give of themselves, because, frankly, that is what our country needs. Therefore, I appreciate what you have said.
I will return to the strategic plan and its objectives. I hope that you will not mind my saying this. I hear what you say and am in accord with everything that you say about prioritising complainers and respondents, and so on. However, I was a little perturbed to see that, of the nine specific strategic objectives in the plan, none of the first three relates to any of that. The first three objectives, at least, relate to internal things.
That seems a bit strange to me, and I will tell you why. When you did your very honest assessment of the key issues and risks that you deal with in your report, you identified the number 1 risk—correctly, I think—as being “Loss of stakeholder confidence”. However, in responding to those key issues and risks, the way that the plan is laid out—I suppose that I am giving you an opportunity to say that the way that it is laid out does not necessarily represent the prioritisation—means that it comes across as being very inward looking, as opposed to the risk, which is about what is happening as far as your stakeholders are concerned. Does what I am saying make sense?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
That is fine. You mentioned that you are carrying out a customer satisfaction survey, which is really good news. I strongly believe in the value of such surveys. However, it would be very interesting to know whether you have conducted, are conducting or will conduct surveys among stakeholders, because you talk about “Loss of stakeholder confidence” in the annual report. Have you done a stakeholder survey and not published it, or have I not seen it? Is that in the works?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
It is about being able to disagree agreeably, which is proving to be more and more of a challenge in our public life. That, in itself, is a disincentive for people to enter public life, which, at the end of the day, is to the detriment of our country and its people.
Will you ever be able to break down the source and the nature of those types of complaints? One thing that I pick up, particularly from colleagues who are in councils, is that more complaints are being made by people in public office about other people in public office. Are you able to comment on that at all?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Oh, are they in the report?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Ethical Standards Commissioner
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Stephen Kerr
Is there a trend of people in public office complaining about other people in public office?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Committee Effectiveness
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Stephen Kerr
People outside the Parliament have continually expressed concerns, which they have aired quite publicly, that too many of our parliamentarians have only ever lived in the bubble of politics, and therefore their ability to do what you describe is inhibited by the fact that they have no hinterland.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Committee Effectiveness
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Stephen Kerr
But there must be something amiss in the legislative process if, during that process, the Parliament or the committees—whichever it is—do not come up against the idea that, actually, a piece of legislation is probably outside the scope of the Parliament’s authority. Surely that is a process-related defect.
