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
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
It is clear that the terms of reference were different, but how long people have to wait for justice is also an issue. People wait year after year, and many die waiting for these things to conclude.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Once you get to the end of the process, you get the recommendations. Ms Dunlop, would the Faculty of Advocates like to see any changes to the UK’s legislative framework in order to make recommendations more impactful? Are there any other areas in which you feel that the legislation could perhaps be tweaked in order to deliver more for the people whom the inquiries are set up for?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Dr Ireton suggested that serving such letters should be at the chair’s discretion, rather than being mandatory.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Okay, thank you. Let us open up the session. The first to ask questions will be Michelle Thomson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
If there is a 10-year inquiry, we are talking about it taking four or five years to produce a report—that is a long, long time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Do not worry—I will give you all an opportunity to make a final point at the end. I always do that, just in case we have missed anything out. That will be your opportunity.
My next question is for Mr Clancy. My colleague Michelle Thomson talked about conflict of interest. Is it appropriate for a legal firm that is involved in a public inquiry to go to the media asking for that inquiry, in which it has a direct pecuniary interest, to be deepened and broadened?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is interesting. Thank you.
As I said earlier, I will give each of you the opportunity, as I always do at the end of evidence sessions, to raise any issues that you wish to raise and have not had the opportunity to do so.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Good. Thank you very much. Mr Pugh?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Dr Ireton, do you think that people are wildly optimistic when they set out the timescale and the cost of inquiries? I have rarely seen an inquiry come in at a cost that even approximates what was initially budgeted for in either time or funding. However, that does not seem to be the case in other jurisdictions. For example, Australia, which I do not think is wildly different from Scotland as a country, had a Covid inquiry that began in September 2023, finished 13 months later and cost £4 million, whereas the UK inquiry has cost well over £160 million already and has been going on for four years, while Scotland’s Covid inquiry has cost £34 million and has been going on for three and a half years. Surely we can learn from elsewhere how to deliver these more effectively and efficiently in order to have a less debilitating impact on taxpayers.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, but, in other jurisdictions, how are the inquiries received by the people on behalf of whom an inquiry is established? They are looking for justice, and there is a perception that they have not received it. My understanding is that, if an inquiry drones on for five or 10 years, the initial impetus is lost. As you will be well aware, once an inquiry report is delivered, the Government of the day, whether it is the UK Government or the Scottish Government, might agree to implement a host of recommendations, of which a proportion, at best, might be implemented a year or two—or five years—later.
There surely must be an element of frustration when an inquiry has taken years and cost a fortune and has resulted in an outcome that might not necessarily be better. Do you think that the UK’s approach results in a better outcome than the punchier inquiries that have cost less and been delivered in a timescale that most laypeople—normal people, if you like—think is realistic? If someone says that they are really keen for a public inquiry to look at X, Y or Z, they do not expect to be told, “Okay, we might have a result for you in five or 10 years.” Even though inquiries can drag on for years, people do not think that that will happen at the start; they all think that a public inquiry will come up with an answer perhaps in the next year or the year after.
How do those shorter inquiries deliver? Following the Australian inquiry into what happened during the Covid pandemic, is there still a level of dissatisfaction, or have people put that to bed and moved on with their lives? Do you get what I am trying to say here? What are we getting as a result of our different approach?
