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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you. I will now open up the questions to colleagues.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed. I call Douglas Lumsden, to be followed by Liz Smith.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
It would be more effective and efficient if it was done collaboratively.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I thank you both for this excellent evidence, which was very interesting. It was a really good discussion. Do you want to make any further points before we wind up the session? Is there anything that you feel that we have not covered?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
We just ran out of time, to be honest.
11:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Kenneth Gibson
As Sarah Watters has no further comments to make, I thank you both once again for your evidence.
We will continue to take evidence on the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme at our next meeting.
That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item on our agenda, which will be discussed in private, is consideration of our work programme. We will have a five-minute comfort break to allow official report staff and our guests to leave.
11:02 Meeting continued in private until 11:28.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that. I should have said “Deputy Prime Minister” instead of “Prime Minister”.
Dr Foster, do you want to add anything on that question?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
There should also be ownership of policy right through from conception to delivery and post-legislative scrutiny. Of course, that relies on the ministers being in post, as we touched on earlier.
One of the things that I have been very curious about in terms of the evidence that we have taken from former ministers, former senior civil servants, current civil servants and academics is that there has been absolutely no mention whatsoever from anyone of special advisers, whose role is ill-defined; they appear to have no specific job description.
Special advisers have been around for 45 to 50 years, and of course they are endemic both in Whitehall and here in the Scottish Parliament. Boris Johnson had 126 of them, on an average salary of £102,000. At Holyrood, there were 17 of them last autumn—on an average salary of £92,000, incidentally—and now there are 12, I understand. What is their relationship like with civil servants and how do they fit into ministerial decision making?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I will wind up with a couple of questions. We touched on consultation when Ross Greer asked his questions, but I think that the issue is not about consultation; I think that people want to feel that they are involved at the start, and that it is really about participation.
For example, the first major consultation that I was involved in was 25 years ago when I was a councillor in Glasgow. The local authority announced that it was gonnae close nine of the 38 secondary schools in the city. It named the nine and there was then gonnae be a consultation on whether each one should close. Remarkably, six months later, the nine that they had announced were the nine that they actually voted to close. There was a huge feeling that it had been a cynical manoeuvre and a box-ticking exercise. Twenty-five years later, that is still a real concern.
Surely, we should not be talking too much about consultation but rather about people participating in policy development at an early stage. People should be consulted on what Government is going to do but also allowed to participate in the development of that policy, rather than having put to them, “This is the policy. What do you think about it?” Most of the time, Governments are gonnae come back and say, “Well, we’re still gonnae plough ahead with perhaps only minor changes.”
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Other members might probe that. Sandy, do you want to say anything before I move on to colleagues?
