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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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. I thank all of you for coming to the meeting.
The bill contains some new powers for sheriff courts, but the Court of Session will remain the main court for trusts. Do you think that the balance is about right in that respect, or should more be done—or be allowed to be done—in the sheriff courts instead of things going to the Court of Session?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I declared my interests before the previous panel of witnesses.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
One of the questions was about trustee insurance. If that became mandatory, would that resolve the issue in regard to individual liability?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I will develop the idea slightly by asking about clarity for trustees. If a charity has an asset and wants to give that to another charity, the general view is that the trustees have to get the best value that they can for that sale, but trustees who are passing an asset on to another charity with a similar charitable basis might want to sell it at a cheaper price. Is there a need for clarity on that in the bill, or is there already enough clarity to allow trustees to do that?
When I worked for a charity, we talked to another charity and asked whether the trustees could sell us an asset at a discount price so that we could use it for charitable purposes, but they said that they had to get the best price for their beneficiaries. Could some clarity be provided about a situation in which another trust benefits?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning to the panel. You have the advantage of knowing what questions we asked the previous panel. I hope that we can make progress.
You will be aware that I said to the previous panel that the bill has some new powers for sheriff courts, but the main powers predominantly still lie in the Court of Session. Do you have a view on that? I will start with Laura Dunlop, on behalf of the Faculty of Advocates.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
That tees up another question. The panel of academics who gave evidence last week suggested that, instead of putting exact wording into this bill, it could just refer back to the 2000 act. That would mean that, if there were a change to the 2000 act, it would therefore immediately change the definition in the bill. Is that solution workable in practice rather than as an academic view?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
So, in practice, that would work for you on a day-to-day basis.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
How does that then relate—or does it relate at all—to the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Bill, under which the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator can appoint interim trustees if no trustees are capable of working? If a trustee needed to step down and they were incapable of doing that, would OSCR not temporarily appoint an interim trustee to keep the trust going?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I will move us on again. A trustee, as you will be aware, does not get to participate in trust decisions under section 12 when they are incapable. Trustees can also remove a fellow trustee from their role on the basis that the trustee is incapable. The risk of abuse of those provisions has been highlighted by the Law Society and other legal stakeholders. The academics who appeared before the committee last week were more relaxed about that possible risk. From more of a practitioner’s perspective, are you concerned about that or happy with it? Is there anything that you would want to add to the bill on that?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Jeremy Balfour
A concern among last week’s panel, because the domicile rules could be unclear, was about what will happen when a foreign national sets up a trust then disappears to another country. In practice, are you dealing with that issue? The issue is to do with someone who is not domiciled in Scotland setting up a trust then running it from another jurisdiction.
