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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 4060 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Perhaps there is also an issue about not always feeling the need to hit the ground running.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
You were very straightforward about behaviours and you talked about keeping an open mind, genuine listening and a rational approach.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That was an excellent answer in a very short time; you covered it in a nutshell. The them-and-us approach that we had several decades ago has dissipated, at least in companies that want to be successful. All levels of a company have to push in the same direction, and it helps when people are involved in that direction.
I worked at a pharmaceutical company that had a staff suggestion scheme through which it asked us all to come up with ideas about how to improve how the company delivered, but nobody submitted any ideas. I suggested to my manager, who passed it up the line, that if the company gave people an incentive, it might find that things would be different. It was then decided that members of staff could get up to 10 per cent of any savings that were made through implementation of a policy that they had suggested, and the company was overwhelmed with suggestions about improvements that it could make.
You probably heard me talk about participation versus consultation in the public sector in our session with the first panel. Staff being able to participate in their company and to suggest ideas that would be directly beneficial to them, as well as to the long-term delivery of the company鈥檚 objectives, is obviously helpful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Do our witnesses have any further points that they would like to make before we wind up the session? Is there anything that you think that we should have touched on but did not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much for your contributions鈥攖hey have been extremely helpful. I also thank you for travelling to Scotland, which makes a huge difference to the quality of the evidence that we take. I say that as someone who is quite averse to virtual meetings in the first place; on top of that, the committee has recently faced some difficult situations, involving all sorts of snarl-ups, in virtual meetings. Your attendance in person is much appreciated.
We will have a five-minute break while we change witnesses.
10:53 Meeting suspended.11:01&苍产蝉辫;翱苍&苍产蝉辫;谤别蝉耻尘颈苍驳鈥&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫;
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Exactly. Take as much time as you need.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, that has come through strongly in evidence. I am now going to open up the session.
10:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
One of the things that you mentioned in your submission was churn. You said:
鈥淐hurn among civil servants is an issue across the civil service in both Whitehall and across the devolved administrations, which is encouraged for the development of generalist civil servants ... Researchers have also commented adversely about churn among politicians鈥.
I had a wee look. Apparently, in the year to September 2022, the UK Government had five education secretaries and, from 2000 to 2022, it had 22 housing ministers. Here at Holyrood, we have had four transport ministers in two years. How much does the churn in ministers, as well as in civil servants, militate against good decision making?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Dr Foster, does the workload of ministers mean that they cannot keep their eye constantly on the ball? Does that have an impact on the quality of decisions, and does it mean that some of the decisions are, in effect, outsourced because they have to rely on other people to have a full grasp of the detail?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Indecisiveness is obviously a concern in some instances.
I will wind up the session by giving our witnesses the opportunity to make any final points if they feel that we have not touched on an issue or if they wish to emphasise something.
