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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2087 contributions
|
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Thank you. Graham?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
By way of clarification, the purpose of the statutory instruments is not to remove someone from being a councillor or an MP or being in the House of Lords; it would prevent an individual sitting as an MSP if those other consequences existed outside of those periods. It is not about this place ordering someone to step down as a councillor and saying, “Should you choose not to, the consequence will be that you cannot be an MSP.” Is that correct?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
The committee will report on the outcome of the decisions on the SSIs in due course. Are members content to delegate the authority to approve the draft report to the convener?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is excellent. Thank you. Sue Webber, would you like to start the questions?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
There is no deduction in relation to members of the House of Lords because, as you say in the policy document, they do not receive a salary; they receive an attendance allowance. What consideration was given to that, perhaps drawing on the consultation, and why was it not considered appropriate to treat the attendance allowance in the same way as the salaries for councillors and MPs?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Yes. I go back to the fundamental reasons for seeking to end dual mandates, namely that it is rightly considered that roles such as councillor, MP and MSP are full-time jobs and that we expect the individuals who fulfil those roles to give them their full-time commitment. The discussions that we have had about the financial side relate to the practical implementation of one of the consequences, whereby individuals benefit—I use the word “benefit”, although I doubt that any of them feel that it is a benefit in this sense—from receiving, in effect, two salaries for a period of time. That is the policy decision in relation to what we are trying to achieve today, is it not?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Who will take responsibility for the monitoring?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good. My other question, which is about the equality impact assessment, is twofold. First, why did it take so long to produce, given the content of the order? Secondly, why was it published so late?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Absolutely. It is a question of allowing adequate and proper scrutiny to take place. The equality impact assessment was published on 16 September. I absolutely accept the difficulties and aim no criticism at all at any of those who support the minister on the matter, but there are timetables for when such things should be provided. Those timetables were established because they give enough time for adequate and proper consideration.
The one element that concerns me about the impact assessment’s contents relates to an issue that you have acknowledged—the subjective challenge of conducting impact assessments with young people and the way in which that is achieved. The process of the order is one thing, but, on a slightly wider scale, with regard to the work that was done on the bill that is now the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025, and on the other legislation, are you any the wiser about how to reach out to young people and to measure the impact on them, rather than engaging only with those who feel that they speak for them—in fact, some do speak for them—and others who say that the subjective evidence is, “There’s no problem here. It must be good because we say it’s good”?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
What concerns me is that, despite the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child here and the very strong foundational requirement for human rights, the impact assessment for the order states:
“Officials are largely reliant on anecdotal evidence from electoral administrators.”
If we look at those coming out of care, we are talking about, first of all, a relatively small group, but also a group that contains some of the most vulnerable individuals.
I suppose that my question is: are you genuinely content that you have come to an understanding of their needs and expectations? I absolutely accept that a single person’s input was invaluable in occasioning this particular change, and I echo your thanks to them and your hopes that that provides good evidence that individuals can change policy, but are you content that you have captured the expectations and needs of this group in particular, given the evidence that we have heard about the geographical challenge that it brings?
