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 1198 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Mr Jones, from a UK or Westminster perspective, we hear about co-design as well. Does that take place post or pre a framework bill being passed?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I have a very brief question before you depart.
As you pointed out, secondary legislation cannot be amended—it is either accepted or rejected. It has been put to us that there should be some way in which a committee could seek conversations with the Government about amending secondary legislation or flag up that, for example, it agrees with 80 per cent of an instrument but has concerns about 20 per cent of it. The committee could ask the Government to go away and think about the issue again. Would that work, or is it something that sounds good in theory but, in practice, might not help?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Do you have a view on that, Mr Carson?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Mr Gibson, in your experience of a number of different committees, is there a role for the lead committee in taking further evidence between stage 2 and stage 3?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I think that our witnesses have touched on this next issue, but they might want to expand on what was said. One of the Government’s justifications for having such bills is that it wants to make the process much more about consultation and taking stakeholders with it. The Government argues that that is easier to do once a framework bill has been passed. Are you sympathetic to that view, or should the consultation and development of policy with stakeholders take place before a bill appears in Parliament?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Would it be helpful to have some kind of framework whereby, if there was a major change in policy between stage 1 and stage 2, there would be an opportunity for the relevant committees to carry out further scrutiny before stage 3? Could that work in practice, or would it just make more work for the committees?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, panel. I remind colleagues that I am on ADP.
I had a very helpful meeting—or I thought it was helpful—with Ally MacPhail and his colleagues just before Christmas to discuss key performance indicators. I am surprised that this far down the road we still do not have a process that we can monitor from end to end or that records how each claim is doing. It makes it very difficult for the Government and for this committee to scrutinise the system to see whether it is working and to make sure that we are getting value for money. Where are we on that process, how long will it take and for what reasons it is taking so long to deliver a system where we can see a breakdown of each stage of the process, from when someone applies to when they get the final decision?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is not the point. I am asking about data collection. Why has the system not been designed in such a way as to get the information? At the moment, when you write to a general practitioner, how long it takes for that GP or medical professional to write back is not monitored. For me, that would be a key indicator of how the system is working. I appreciate that the agency is delivering all those benefits but that is not the issue. The issue is around the performance indicators. Why was the system not designed to provide such indicators in the first place?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I think that the passing on of data to the First-tier Tribunal is meant to happen without paper; it is meant to happen through IT. Having spoken to a few former colleagues, there seem to be some issues with that working efficiently at the moment. Is there a problem and how quickly can that issue be resolved so that everything is not done on paper but through IT?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I find that quite surprising. We designed a new system from scratch less than eight years ago and yet now we are saying that the system cannot do what we want it to do. Either that is the fault of whoever designed the programme at Scottish Government level or there is something wrong within Social Security Scotland. It is not an old system; it is a system that is eight years and younger, and yet you are telling me that it has not been designed in such a way that we can monitor that information. There seems to have been some kind of breakdown somewhere, either within the design team or within your staff.
