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: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
With all due respect, minister, I think that you are slightly underplaying this. The convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee—Mr Gibson, who has been at the Parliament for 26 years—appeared before us last week and said that his committee finds it very difficult when that type of financial memorandum is issued and it cannot undertake detailed scrutiny. I think that his words were that none of that legislation should come to the Parliament. How do you respond to his comments?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, minister. One of the comments that your colleagues make when a framework bill comes to the Parliament—particularly those that we have had recently—is that they want to consult and design the scheme with stakeholders. Thus, they want more to come under secondary legislation so that we can have that flexibility. Why can that co-design, which is a good thing, not be done before the legislation comes to Parliament? Everyone will then know what stakeholders think, although there are often different views among stakeholders, and then Parliament can come to a view. Why does that have to happen after the primary legislation has been passed?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I am not quite sure that you have answered my question. Why can the co-design not happen first, so that the Parliament gets to scrutinise that? What is the benefit to the Parliament, to legislation and to good law if that co-design happens first?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Do you think that one of the reasons why the Government got itself into an issue with the health and social care bill was that the co-design was going to be done once the legislation was passed but many voices were telling us different things? In retrospect, do you think that it would have been better for more detail to have been found about that bill at an earlier stage, so that Parliament could have come to a view on it, rather than moving it or kicking it into the long grass?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Yes.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is an interesting philosophical question, which might be for another day.
I will move on. As you will be aware, one issue with secondary legislation is that we have to take it or leave it—we vote for it or we vote against it. We can make comments but, ultimately, the power that Parliament has is to say yes or no. Some witnesses have suggested that there should be an ability to amend secondary legislation or have the ability to conditionally approve it. For example, that might allow us to say, “We like 98 per cent of this, but we have real concerns about 2 per cent. Would the Government look at that again and bring forward a fresh view on it?” Could that approach work? Would the Government be open to it?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
My question is for Jonathan Jones in the first instance. On the presumption that we can have some understanding of what a framework bill is, would it be helpful to have guidelines or an agreement between the Government and Parliament on how such bills should be dealt with and a governing framework that would ensure that both parties could work constructively together? Is that possible?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Has that been thought about in Wales? Is it something that you are thinking of taking forward?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Mr Jones, from a UK or Westminster perspective, we hear about co-design as well. Does that take place post or pre a framework bill being passed?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Framework Legislation and Henry VIII Powers
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I have a very brief question before you depart.
As you pointed out, secondary legislation cannot be amended—it is either accepted or rejected. It has been put to us that there should be some way in which a committee could seek conversations with the Government about amending secondary legislation or flag up that, for example, it agrees with 80 per cent of an instrument but has concerns about 20 per cent of it. The committee could ask the Government to go away and think about the issue again. Would that work, or is it something that sounds good in theory but, in practice, might not help?
