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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1206 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, and thank you for coming. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that have already been made.
We are told that one of the reasons for having framework bills in Scotland is that the Government wants to consult further once the primary legislation is in place. Does it help you as a drafter to have the information from a consultation when you draw up primary legislation, or is it more helpful to have it when you are working on secondary legislation—or does it make no difference?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
It is coming up to 40 years since I started working in the law, which is a bit frightening, but one of the things that I remember from my first year of jurisprudence is that the point is to make good law—which means, in other words, that it can be understood by as many people as possible and implemented by the courts, if required. From a drafting perspective and given your vast amounts of experience, do you think that secondary legislation gives good law and clarity so that people know what the Government of the day is trying to do?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Do you not think that, when we are dealing with an area of law—say, criminal law—if it is all in the statute, it is easier for people to find and interpret the information, instead of their having to look at the primary legislation and then X amount of secondary legislation?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
“Don’t touch what we’ve done!” [Laughter.]
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is a fair point. Perhaps I am just showing my age here.
Moving on slightly, I think that you have answered this already, but just for clarification, am I right in saying that policy development is not really your area and that you get sent instructions that say, “This is what we want. Turn it into legal language”? Is it correct to say that you are not really involved in what lies behind the policy?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Would sunset clauses help with these types of legislation? Have we looked at saying “we will grant this but for a limited period of time” to force the executive—whether a new Government or the same Government—to at least justify their use? Would that be a possibility or would it simply add more administration to a busy timescale?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Are we in agreement on that, or is anyone a Henry VIII fan?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
One area that we have not discussed—I do not want to open a can of worms—is that, in the Welsh Parliament, the minister who has laid secondary legislation comes to the committee and is more involved in the scrutiny of that. I do not know about the other legislatures. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I am conscious of time, so maybe anyone with a view on that could write to the committee. It would be interesting to see whether the Government and the committee working collectively leads to better secondary legislation.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Jeremy Balfour
I am happy to use the word “investment”, too. You are right that the budget has to be balanced. If that investment is made, my basic understanding of economics—it is basic—tells me that there are two choices: we have to either raise more income by increasing tax or cut another department’s budget. Whether or not we call it an investment, am I correct in my understanding, or is there is a magic wand that I have not worked out?
