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.
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Displaying 2843 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
Whether they have a vote is irrelevant. Young people deserve to have someone to act as their voice in here, regardless of that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
The role of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner is specifically to give voices to young people, which is something that the Government makes assumptions about. The other week, when the commissioner was giving evidence to us, some of our questions about the challenges were about what we presumed to be important, but she kept bringing us back to the point that she was there to make representations on what the young people had said. She was quite clear in reinforcing that argument. The assumptions that we make about the challenges that young people face today—and all these things—can be quite sweeping sometimes.
Going back to budgets and the spend, you may struggle to pinpoint the value added—it is a fine balance—but there is potentially the chance to be a little bit more critical about some of the more tangible things like spending on travel and ancillary items.
Part of the commissioner’s evidence—as a committee, we hear far too often about this—was about the massive implementation gap that exists between policy and what happens on the ground. The evidence outlines that the creation of another body or person to champion the needs of a specific group appears to be a reaction to ineffective policy implementation and a lack of access to justice.
We need to be mindful about how we proceed, with the potential for exponential growth in the number of commissioners or in their budgets.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
I am here as the convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, and I am struggling not to give my party’s view—but thank you for your question. I will leave it there.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
Okay! [Laughter.] It was also interesting to learn about her new and innovative ways of engaging with young people to make sure that she was hearing their voices. I am fortunate enough that a couple of members of this committee were part of that evidence taking and I know that they will reinforce that.
The commissioner’s powers are being expanded later this year with the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We will be able to gauge her powers of having some influence across the community.
Other than that, our scrutiny will be based mainly on the evidence that the commissioner’s office shares with us, aligned to our other programmes of work on legislation, including evidence on bills, and inquiries that we are working on. That is where we are.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
They do, but disabled young people are covered by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner. As I said previously, the children’s commissioner is for every young person, whether able-bodied or disabled.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
I am not certain that the commissioner spoke an awful lot about that specifically to us, because the evidence was about her strategy going forward. She was taking a new approach. In the past, you have heard about the gaps in keeping the Promise and how care-experienced young people still feel let down. We had an informal session with them and we heard some quite critical voices. It is the role of the commissioner to champion those voices as well.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
Do you want to go first, Martin, while I have a think?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Sue Webber
It is difficult because everything that the commissioner generally does is more subjective, which is why we were so keen to learn about that accountability tracker. You will know that, in terms of challenging her budget, there is a split in roles and responsibilities. As a committee, we take assurance that her role in coming in with a balanced budget is scrutinised adequately elsewhere within the parliamentary process—that is, by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Apologies if I have that wrong.
The key performance indicators that we hear about so much—perhaps when we challenge Government ministers—are not quite as relevant to the children’s commissioner role. We have to be a bit more subjective in doing that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Sue Webber
You talked about wanting “more impact” just now; I am trying to figure out what you mean by that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Sue Webber
Obviously, there will be some questions specifically about Gaelic and there will be some specifically about Scots, but if anyone wants to come in after a question has been directed to someone specific, please catch my eye. We have a lot to juggle because of the hybrid nature of today’s meeting.
We will move on to questions from Ruth Maguire.
