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 1694 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
On finances, I understand that the Scottish Parliament information centre requested data on income and expenditure plans but Registers of Scotland was not able, or not willing, to provide it. We also have questions about transparency over staffing. The impression that we get is that less information is being shared than in previous corporate plans. You have set out why there is vagueness on staffing levels—it is because you are undergoing a workforce planning project. We feel that less information is available on income and expenditure projections compared to what we have previously received. Why were you not able to share more of that information with us?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
I am looking at the time.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
Before I bring in Alexander Burnett, I also want to ask about the issue of expedited cases. Do you have any figures in that respect? I see that, in 2020-21, the expedite option had a 54 per cent success rate—that is, only 728 out of 1,359 applications were accepted for the expedite process. Why is the rate of refusal of expedite applications so high?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
I see that, in 2021-22, 49 per cent of requests were approved, which is actually below 50 per cent. It looks as if the rate might be increasing this financial year, although the number of applications is lower. Nevertheless, it still seems quite high. If it is not appropriate for cases to be expedited because people have made mistakes, can you not try to deal with that situation by ensuring that there are not so many requests coming in? After all, it is your organisation that has to process them.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
Rejections have been mentioned. There has been an increase in the number of rejections. In 2021-22, which is the last full year, the increase in the number of rejections has been significant; the number of rejections of applications over three months old has more than doubled. Why has it gone up at that rate? Do you think that the number will stabilise? I know that it is a small percentage of all cases, but the rejection rate is on an upward trajectory.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
In 2021, 716 applications were rejected. In the following year, 1,247 were rejected. The number of rejections went up quite a lot. Was that for the same reasons that you outlined, or is there another reason why the number spiked?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
I will bring in Michelle Thomson, who has a quick supplementary question on that point.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
Thank you. I take the opportunity also to thank you for the monthly reports that the committee has been receiving. This is an area of interest to the committee, and there are a number of areas that we wish to explore this morning. I hand over to Colin Smyth.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
Yes.
I remind witnesses and questioners to be as concise as possible. We want to get through quite a lot this morning. After this, I will bring in Jamie Halcro Johnston for a wee supplementary, before the next question.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Claire Baker
Our next item of business is an evidence session on the activities and performance of Registers of Scotland. Registers of Scotland is a non-ministerial office and part of the Scottish Administration. It is directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament and responsibility for scrutiny falls mainly within the remit of this committee.
I welcome Jennifer Henderson, keeper of the Registers of Scotland, who is joined by Christopher Kerr, registration and policy director, Registers of Scotland.
As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible. I invite the keeper to make a short opening statement.
