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 757 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is one of my favourite lines, by the way. I use it all the time—if you do not understand it, it is probably wrong.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
It would be interesting to hear from Professor Whitaker. We will not be able to come up with a hard and fast test that would allow us to feed legislation into a computer to provide a green light for legislation that is fine or a red light for framework legislation, but is there at least a set of principles, as Dr Tickell has pointed out, that we could use to make that judgment?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Following on from some of the things that have just been said, I think that Dr Tickell, in particular, made the interesting point that the justification that is often given for this approach is the pace of change and, critically, the length of time that it takes to get legislation through the Parliament. As a parliamentarian, certainly in the Scottish Parliament, I would gently question that premise. That might be the case if we were dealing with stage 3s every day, or even every week, but ultimately, without using emergency procedures, a short bill can be passed in three or four months. It is not unheard of for a bill to be introduced in September and passed by Christmas time, depending on the length of it. Would witnesses agree with that insight?
I have no experience at Westminster, I am also interested to hear from panel members about whether the world is very different there. The ability have electronic voting here makes it easier to vote, for example. The more fundamental point is: should we be asking the Government to reconceive how it thinks about legislation? Should it be making shorter bills that are more focused? It might find that those are easier to get through. Essentially, the Government is seeking to avoid Parliament, but without necessarily having justification for doing so. Do you agree with those insights?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
The point that Dr Fox raised about the loss of the green paper to white paper procedure is important. Is the excuse that there is not the time valid in Westminster, or is that rationale just convenient for the party of government? Dr Govan, you are nodding.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Dr Grez Hidalgo, was your proposal roughly along the same lines? Are there any other elements that you want to highlight?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is also true of primary legislation. That is the argument that we constantly get from the Government when we lodge amendments to legislation. It says, “You don’t realise what you have done.” However, I take the broader point.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is noted.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
City Region and Regional Growth Deals
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
That is a useful set of insights. I get a sense of slight frustration, which is very helpful.
I want to ask a brief additional question, although it might lead to an expansive answer. Although all the growth deals can identify many good projects, one concern is about how those projects align, both within growth deals and, more particularly, between growth deals. Is there a danger that although we have policies that might work for a particular area, they might not all join up? Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Are there wider strategies at play? Do your deals play nicely with neighbouring deals, or should that be looked at as we move forward?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
City Region and Regional Growth Deals
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
That is from the external perspective, but do you think that that works? That is about things stopping you doing things. Do you have projects in mind that are mutually reinforcing?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
City Region and Regional Growth Deals
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
You can judge whether this is an unfair question. Did the previous growth deals make any observations about things to avoid or things that they wished they had known when they were embarking on their deals?
