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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1428 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
That is an absolutely critical piece of work. We are taking that forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
You might have a fair point. The exercise that we are going through at the moment is very much looking at value for money, impact and whether something delivers on outcomes. We are really trying to land that in the right place for short-term fiscal balance. On the longer-term position, you spoke about what is critical, highlighting that there are things that maybe do not deliver on the intended outcomes that we need to take a hard look at. That work is under way at the moment.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
Lessons learned will be visible in different ways, depending on what the issue was. With regard to some of the governance arrangements around Ferguson’s, for example, lessons are visible in that there is now a completely different governance structure for how decisions are made there. We talked earlier about minutes, which mean that everything is recorded in a proper, punctual and accurate way, and is there for the record. That is how lessons learned are visible.
Policy decisions will always end up involving judgments. We would hope that, most of the time, that would be the right judgment, but occasionally it will not.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
That is certainly not my experience and it is not the practice that I see in place at all.
You have heard some of the detail around why it is important to record decisions and improvements are being made in the recording of decisions and how they have been reached. I hope that what you have heard here today gives you some reassurance around that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
I see where you are getting to. Clearly, we need to guard against that, but any organisation that we fund is funded in order to carry out particular tasks. It would have applied for funding on the basis of meeting Scottish Government objectives that were set out. Where the Scottish Government is taking policy decisions and consulting, we would look at what organisations were saying in the round, alongside all the other organisations, whether we fund them or not. My expectation would be that there is no hierarchy of importance of an organisation’s views on a subject that in any way correlates to whether it is being funded. It is important that we make that distinction. Organisations are, as I say, funded to carry out particular tasks, so that distinction is important.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
The processes are the processes, and the minutes are now part of—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
Of course it is our expectation of every minister and every cabinet secretary—absolutely.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
There were advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages was around the content of the census and being able to carry it out according to when we felt was the best time. The disadvantage was the UK-wide publicity around the census. I will bring the permanent secretary in on some of the detail around that, but such judgments will be made by looking at the pros and cons and whether it is the best thing to do. Clearly, the most important thing with the census is to have a return at a level that is reliable. That is the top thing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
Of course, ministers have supported all the improvements that have been made and that you have just heard the detail of. In my inbox, I regularly have minutes that have come through rapidly, not just of meetings with external organisations but of meetings with officials around decision making, all of which have been recorded. Everything is minuted, which is how it should be. If you are asking me whether that has always been the case, the answer is no. You have just heard why the improvements were put in place—it was because of concerns such as the one that you have just highlighted. Apart from anything else, it is extremely helpful for ministers to have those minutes, because it enables them to refer back.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Shona Robison
They were not in place to the extent that they are now. We have heard about the changes that have been made. Minutes are now required and are taken in every single one of those circumstances. As I say, the minutes of every meeting that I have had pop up in my inbox—
