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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1744 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Group
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Martin Whitfield
That is very helpful. Thank you, both, for attending the committee this morning. We will consider the application for the proposed CPG as our next agenda item. The clerks will be in touch with you in due course.
Item 3 is a decision on whether to approve the new cross-party group.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Group
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you very much indeed. I open it up to questions from the committee.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
That is interesting. I mean no disrespect, but I have never envisaged the proxy voting happening just in the chamber. I was thinking of people who, at present, are joining through BlueJeans and making their point of order afterwards. How strange that is. There is a change or difference of experience in this place.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
I agree and I think that we need to look at that and possibly discuss it further. People talk with dread about such situations, because of the various planning bills and traffic regulations in the past. Are there any further comments about the letter or are we happy for the trial to be not less than 12 months? I think that we need to have enough data to decide how we go forward. We are talking about the eligibility for a proxy vote including maternity, paternity and bereavement leave. Are we happy with the phrase “serious illness”? Do we want just “illness”?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
There may well be a role for the committee or for Parliament, if and when the trial period starts, to give members the opportunity to ask questions about that and investigate it so that they both understand the obligation and see an opportunity that may make some situations easier for them to deal with.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
I think that that is very helpful. The procedure would be a temporary rule change, which would sit next to a short report from this committee that would go to the chamber to be voted on before the trial period would begin. I am slightly concerned that any member who wants to exercise a proxy might fear that the committee would be there the minute they choose to exercise it, watching them and asking how it is going.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
Agenda item 2 is about proxy voting, which the committee has been looking at for a long time. We have now received correspondence from the Parliamentary Bureau and the Scottish parliamentary Labour Party in relation to proxy voting.
Today, I would like us to have our final discussions on where we stand on proxy voting, in the hope that, in the near future, we can propose a temporary scheme, which we can invite members to take on for a period of time. As I said, we have received two letters from interested parties—one from the parliamentary Labour Party, which seems very much in support of proxy voting, and a longer letter from the Parliamentary Bureau. Are there any comments before we start? After any comments, I think that we should work through the letters so that we can delve into some of the questions that we will need to resolve before coming up with a scheme.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
Excellent. I think that we are content that the person who grants the proxy should, as appropriate, be able to take back the vote for specific instances and that the scheme should be flexible in order to show that. With regard to the transparency, again, I am content with the fact that the Parliament will be aware that a proxy vote has been cast through the process of the member casting it, rather than anything more public than that happening beforehand. Obviously, the member might choose to explain what is happening, but I do not think that we need more than that. In relation to the application, I certainly do not think that we need anything other than the conversation between the member and the Presiding Officer. Are we content with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
If the relationship between the person who grants the proxy and the person who casts it was abused in that way—albeit never to prejudge a situation—the requirement in the code of conduct not to be discourteous or disrespectful would seem to apply fully fairly and squarely. The relationship between the person who holds the proxy and the one who has granted it has to be based on trust. That is one of the fundamental principles of the Parliament. I imagine that there would be comeback, probably in many forms.
Similarly, in situations both in this session and in previous sessions where a vote has been cast in the wrong way, it has always been available to a member to put their intent on the record, through a point of order. Obviously, that does not change the count of the vote at the time, because of the need for certainty.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Correspondence (Proxy Voting)
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Martin Whitfield
It is interesting that you make those two points at the same time. We know that, with stage 3 amendments, there will not be time to pop out and have lengthy phone calls about how to exercise a proxy vote. The responsibility is based on a relationship of trust.
In relation to how many proxies members can hold and whether they are doing the right thing by holding more than one, we heard very strong evidence that proxy voting must not be used to create a block vote, which has happened in other Parliaments. I do not think that we heard any evidence in support of block voting. Indeed, some people who were able to vote in that way were adamant that they did not want to have the ability to exercise a block vote. I agree on that.
Mention has been made of people not being able to have a proxy vote for more than two members. Given the current set-up of the parties and the fact that there are no independent members in Parliament in this session, that would work for all the parties. Certainly for the trial period, two seems to be a sensible number. It might be the case that someone who holds two proxies says that it is just too hard and that it should be possible to hold only one. We can look at that at the end of the session.
