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 809 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
I cannot guarantee what will happen one way or the other. There is a good chance that the procedure will be used for some regulations.
As I said, I will try where possible to work with the committee in a way that will be acceptable to members.
Last week, we had a debate and a vote in the Parliament about Covid vaccination certification, so the proposals have already had one level of scrutiny in Parliament.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
All the points on the Scottish Law Commission that the previous committee made in its legacy paper have been listened to and taken on board by the Government. I know that the issue has been an open sore for the committee and the Scottish Law Commission for a wee while. The bill on moveable transactions will probably come to this committee, when we take it forward.
This year鈥檚 programme for government announced quite a few SLC bills that will be going through. I use that as an example of the Government listening. It is a good news story; we have listened to what the committee said and implemented it through the programme for government. I probably have the dates for the moveable transactions legislation here somewhere but, to make sure that I give them to you accurately, I will get that information to the committee at a later date.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
I would assume that it would comply with the GDPR.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
I will do my utmost to make sure that you get the information. Because of the sheer volume of work that is done, it is inevitable that mistakes are made. People are human and things go wrong, but we will try to make sure that we have a process that means that the information that you get about SSIs is as accurate as possible.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
As you suggested, there is a difficult situation, and it is constantly moving. I do not like to submit last-minute SSIs to the committee unless doing so is completely necessary. I believe that in this case it is. Whenever possible, we will try to ensure that the committee is sighted on issues well in advance.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
As you have already said, convener, it is important to have clarity in legislation. I know that there have, during the past year, been difficulties with definitions of various things. Sometimes, that is unavoidable, both in political debate and in the legal realms. At all times, we have tried to ensure that legislation is clear and understandable. It is extremely important that I do that on every occasion and that we try to introduce legislation that is as clear as possible.
As I mentioned, a couple of issues have arisen in relation to the definition of concepts, which has caused some confusion. I have no simple solution鈥攖here is no simple solution鈥攖o the problem, but as the responsible minister I will strive to make everything as clear as possible. The simpler we make everything, the easier we will all get on. I am a great believer in that point of view.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
I know about this issue, because the committee brought it up with my officials at its recent business planning session. I am happy to give an undertaking that, as part of our profile for future legislation, we will seek to identify significant packages of SSIs for implementation on particular legislation. I can also provide some information today. A package of seven SSIs to implement the Redress for Survivors (Historical Child Abuse in Care) (Scotland) Act 2021 will be lodged between September and November. In addition, the implementation of the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 will see three SSIs in October and three in November; the implementation of the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 will see two SSIs in November, with more to follow; and the implementation of the Forensic Medical Services (Victims of Sexual Offences) (Scotland) Act 2021 will begin in January 2022.
As I said, I was aware that the committee had an issue in that regard, but my officials were able to come to me and give me that detail so that I could bring the information to the committee. That goes back to what I said earlier, in that the more that we can have an open and frank discussion, the more that there will be matters that I can deal with in order to give the committee the information that it needs.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
I am quite happy to do that and to try to give you the detail.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
All the bills that we announced in the programme for government will be interesting in their own ways. At the moment, none of the bills is in the category of what is sometimes called a framework bill. I am happy to keep that under review and come back to the committee should the position change. I want to ensure that we have open dialogue and, basically, that there are no surprises. It is too early to discuss specific powers under individual bills, but I will keep that under review and get back to the committee on it.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Minister for Parliamentary Business
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
George Adam
It will be your QR code, which will be secure in as much as you will be the one who will be there. I know that Mr Simpson said that he had managed to gerrymander a QR code last week, but I do not believe that that would be the case. You would have your own code.
We have all been using QR codes to a certain degree to check into hospitality venues, and it will be very similar to that. The detail that goes over is the fact that George Adam has appeared at this pub or this restaurant at this time, and that is it.
