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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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Sir David, do you want to come in?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
I think that Meg Russell would like to come in.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Our second agenda item is an evidence session as part of our committee effectiveness inquiry, which is seeking to answer the question of whether changes to the Parliament’s procedures and practices would help committees to work more effectively. In recent weeks, we have launched a public call for views on the inquiry. We have invited consultation responses from committees, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, political parties and individual MSPs. We have also written to a range of legislatures, asking for information on how their committees operate and evaluate their work.
Today’s session is the first in a series of four oral evidence sessions as part of our inquiry. We are joined by our committee inquiry adviser, Dr Danielle Beswick, who is sitting to my right. Today, we will explore and try to answer the overarching questions of how committees are viewed externally and how we can evaluate their impact.
I am grateful to welcome Gemma Diamond, who is director of innovation and transformation at Audit Scotland; Dr Marc Geddes, who is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Edinburgh; Sir David Natzler KCB, who was clerk to the House of Commons between 2015 and 2019, clerk of committees between 2008 and 2009 and clerk to the Reform of the House of Commons Committee, which is known as the Wright committee, between 2009 and 2010; Brian Taylor, who is a former BBC Scotland political editor, a columnist for The Herald and a long-time observer of this Parliament; and Professor Meg Russell, who is director of the constitution unit at University College London.
As this is a round-table evidence session, although we will take the usual approach of members asking witnesses questions, we will seek the opportunity for witnesses to have a discussion between themselves and to have an evidence session that is perhaps more open and free flowing than the ones that sometimes take place in committees. There is no expectation that witnesses should answer every question. When the witnesses who are appearing remotely wish to respond to a question or make a comment, they should type R in the chat function or just jump in.
We will move to the first of our facilitating questions, which is about the characteristics of a successful committee. I will hand over to Sue Webber.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is why I left it until the end.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Let me press you on one area. What is the role of the spectacle of politics that we sometimes see in committees? We certainly see it in the chamber. In committees, what are the advantages and disadvantages of that? What is its role and importance?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
I will pursue that point. I am interested in the influential drivers of committee operations. You and Marc Geddes have talked about the relationships and the politicians who sit on a committee, irrespective of how they got there, but we also have our standing orders. We can instruct committees to operate in a certain way, and there has been discussion about the role of conveners, the role of the Government and party balance. Do we understand what would happen if, instead of it just being a case of looking at it and seeing what is operating, we had a stronger set of standing orders or stronger separation between the Government and committees? Is it just the people and the relationships, or is there something about the framework that can assist the relationships and the groups?
I do not know who would like to answer that terribly framed question. I will bring in David Natzler. What is your experience of the interrelationship between the rules and the members?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Well, I will not apologise for the toughness of the question. Please come back in should thoughts come to you afterwards.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the fourth meeting in 2025 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I have received apologies from Ruth Maguire, and I welcome Rona Mackay, who is attending as a committee substitute.
Our first agenda item is a decision on whether to take subsequent items in private. Item 3 is a discussion on the evidence that we are about to hear, item 4 is a discussion on proposed rule changes to the code of conduct and item 5 is consideration of a note by the clerks on the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016. Are members content to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
We will simply slip from that point into Rona Mackay’s set of questions, so I hand over to you, Rona.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Martin Whitfield
Before I invite Brian Taylor back in, I will add a further question. Should we be considering media coverage in respect of the effectiveness of a committee?
