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: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
I have one more question about democratic engagement, which is on candidates. One thing that we talked to the Electoral Commission about, which will no doubt be part of our future discussions and debates on the electoral reform bill, was getting people to stand for election at any level of democratic representation. One concern that we discussed with the commission was the level of abuse, intimidation and threat experienced, particularly by women candidates.
Has the Government thought any more about that? I will say publicly that I was disappointed that the Electoral Commission did not really have much in the way of advanced thought on how to counteract that issue. I am deeply worried—I know that you will share this concern, minister—that some really good people who have so much to give in public service just will not do so in the current environment. They do not feel that they can put themselves forward, and we are losing so much talent from the democratic process.
Do you have, or does the Government have, any further thoughts on what we can do to take positive action to encourage people to stand and how we can take the necessary action to reduce the level of intimidation and threat?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Minister, I am interested in hearing a little bit more about why you think that we have that situation in Scotland—as you pointed out—whereby we are not faring as well in the completeness of registrations compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. According to the Electoral Commission, 600,000 to 1 million Scots have not registered. Can you elucidate a bit more about why that is the case? In your discussions with the Electoral Commission yesterday, did you get down to any deep whys?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
I agree with you about our working relationship, and I am happy to put it on the official record that I like the minister personally.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
I think that it is important that we have that stated very firmly.
The Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election was the first time that voter identification had been part of our voters’ electoral experience, and it went really well. The reports that have come from the returning officer for the by-election are very encouraging. We have exchanged views in the past about voter ID. Are you becoming more reassured that our voters in Scotland prize their vote and understand that showing a little bit of ID is fine?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
That was Mid Bedfordshire.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Basically, there was a conversation between you and John-Paul Marks, the permanent secretary.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
I recognise that you are representing a significant block of MSPs, but would you personally be interested in ideas that would enhance our debate and allow for a little bit more topicality in how portfolio questions are conducted, for example? You would be interested in seeing how that could be done, would you?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
And your homework will be marked later by the Scottish Information Commissioner and others.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
I will take those seconds to mention one particular idea that is perhaps more major than some of the other ideas that I have been alluding to: that of having committee conveners elected by Parliament. We have raised that point before. Do you have any current thoughts on that? Everyone is talking about how we can enhance the power of committees, how we can make them even more independent and how we can achieve a certain level of scrutiny and inquiry that we all know that Scotland’s Parliament needs. What are your thoughts on that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Do you think that the Electoral Commission should do a bit more research on that? At the minute, we all seem to be wringing our hands—rightly so, because the number of people in Scotland who do not voluntarily register to vote means that there is a huge democratic deficit—but none of us seems to know definitively why that is the case. You said that there are many variables. In your opinion, is it important that the Electoral Commission does the research and presents those variables to us, so that we can have an informed, structured discussion about that?