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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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
It may be helpful to get an update because at the moment it takes 20 weeks for a decision from the tribunal service. I understand that part of the reason is that it takes longer to deal with the papers, which is obviously not giving the client the best service. An update on that would be helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
The issue for policy makers is that if we are looking to evaluate how the policy is working, we can only do so based on data. If we want to change policy because it is not working, it is very difficult if we do not have that information.
Our current difficulty as a Parliament is that we want to review the system and say that it would be better to do this or that, but we do not have the information to work with. That is what is lacking within Social Security Scotland.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. Thank you for coming. Before I move us on a wee bit, I am interested in returning to something that Lloyd Austin said in his previous answer, which is about spending more time scrutinising secondary legislation than primary legislation. We discussed that a wee bit last week. From a stakeholder perspective, how do you see that happening, and how would you like it to happen?
10:15Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I could change that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Does anybody else want to come in on that point?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful. I will briefly touch on one other point. When we have a framework bill, there are questions about how well we can scrutinise the financial implications of secondary legislation. Obviously, we would have a financial memorandum, which my colleague Roz McCall has pointed out. Does anyone have experience, either positive or negative, of making sure that what the Government has said that legislation will cost is delivered, at the expected price?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you for that—it was helpful.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
It does.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful.
We have already picked up on this, but I want to dig a wee bit deeper into the scrutiny of secondary legislation. One frustration of non-Government politicians is that they cannot amend secondary legislation—it is either a yes or a no. Last week, there was some talk, particularly from the academics, about devising a scheme of not necessarily amendments, but some kind of procedure whereby a committee or the Parliament could at least raise concerns and suggest how changes might be made. From a practical perspective, could that work in practice? Do you have experience of other jurisdictions that have that model?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Jonnie Hall, I know that you are concerned about having the flexibility and speed of secondary legislation, particularly in an emergent situation. Would you have any concern around the greater scrutiny of secondary legislation, or is your concern more about its not holding anything up too much?
