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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 502 contributions
|
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
Oliver Mundell
For absolute clarity, is there nothing that could be done to the section other than to remove it?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
Oliver Mundell
That is helpful.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
Do you accept that the approach means that committee members cannot amend the legislation? When the detail is held back, the scope for amending legislation is limited.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
Looking beyond the proposed bill on judicial factors, you will be aware that the Minister for Victims and Community Safety recently wrote to Lady Paton, the chair of the SLC, committing Scottish Government officials to undertake “detailed work” on the SLC’s report on an approved scheme for financial provision and cohabitation breakdown, its “Report on Aspects of Leases: Termination” and its “Report on Review of Contract Law: Formation, Interpretation, Remedies for Breach, and Penalty Clauses”. I understand what you have said to my colleague Jeremy Balfour about not being able to look too far into the future, but I would be interested to hear your view on whether those bills might come to the committee through the rest of the parliamentary session.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
That is positive to hear because, although no one ever wants to create more work for themselves, those proposals cover important areas that are often overlooked by the Parliament.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
That would be great. I appreciate what you say but, given some of the previous issues, we would also appreciate any background that you can provide on the work that the Scottish Government has done, as it is some time since the consultation on the proposal took place. It would be good to hear what has been going on in the background.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
Is there still a firm commitment to introduce one bill in year 4 and one in year 5?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
I want to push a bit more on framework bills. They give ministers and the Government increased flexibility, but Parliament loses something in the process. I know that there is always a trade-off between Parliament and Government—I accept that—but as an individual member of the Parliament I worry about my ability to influence the likes of the proposed agriculture bill on behalf of my constituents. If everything is in secondary legislation, the chance to lodge amendments, to have them voted on and to have a transparent debate and process is limited. That changes the nature of the debate and negotiation on a policy. One example is that the committee’s members—or a majority of the members of the committee—had the same view on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. What is your reflection on that, as a parliamentarian?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
That process clearly takes something away from my constituents. I do not want to get into the politics of it, but that will be the case for members from other parties, including Scottish National Party MPs in the UK Parliament.
There are parts of the country where people did not put their trust in the Government and, because of the decision to go down the framework bill route, their elected representatives in Parliament do not have the option of lodging amendments to show what the alternatives were, and to see the Parliament vote on them.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Oliver Mundell
That is helpful. I will push back and say that you might have anticipated that the committee might ask about the proposed bill today. The SLC bills are not particularly controversial when you look at the headline subject but, although they are not politically controversial, there are a lot of considerations in them, as there are with any legislation. We want to be satisfied that the Government has done the work behind the scenes to ensure that the consultation on the original proposal is still relevant and up to date, because that will allow us to move much more quickly once the bill arrives.
