Chamber and committees

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.

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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.

If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.

Meeting date: 28 February 2023

Jackie Dunbar

I am pleased and honoured to speak in this important debate. I congratulate Joe FitzPatrick on bringing it to the chamber, and I thank him for all his continuous work and his support for equality.

Given the rise of the political right around the globe, there is no more important time to promote LGBT+ rights and to reflect on the long, drawn-out struggle to achieve LGBT+ equality, both here and around our planet. Scotland, under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party, is a world leader in promoting equality, fairness and respect. The current Scottish Government has those values at its heart, and that must never change. Scotland is a diverse country with welcoming communities, where we value diversity and Scotland’s LGBT+ community, and that must always be the case.

In preparing for the debate, I reflected on some of the history of tackling LGBT+ discrimination in Scotland, and I think that this is worth highlighting. I recalled that, in 2005, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender was made illegal. In 2009, equal rights were given to same-sex couples who were applying for adoption. Just in 2019, this Parliament unanimously passed the Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act 2018, which allowed for gay people to be pardoned for their historical convictions, which were based on outdated legislation that targeted the LGBT+ community simply because of their sexual orientation. We have also enshrined the TIE campaign in Scots law.

Through all those measures, we have taken Scotland far on the journey to being a fairer, accepting and inclusive nation. However, around the world, it is sad to say, LGBT people still continue to face widespread stigma, exclusion and discrimination. Although we in Scotland and the UK do not see discrimination on the scale that it exists in many other countries, the rights of LGBT+ people—indeed, their very existence—are still a topic of debate. That is, to be frank, unacceptable. Today, and always, I want to be clear that I do not, in any way, debate LGBT+ rights, and I agree that society should not either. The LGBT+ community will always have an ally in me. I also appeal to aabodie to carefully consider the language that is used in these discussions.

For something as simple as falling in love, I take it for granted that I will not be judged, yet those in the LGBTQ community are unable to have that same simple privilege, and today still have to fight for the right not to be judged.

Last night, I watched a video that Mhairi Black MP posted on social media, in which she was asked about representation and role models, and about who her lesbian heroine is. My lesbian heroine is, I am proud to say, my strong, independent, fun-loving daughter, who has to fight every single day to be accepted in the eyes of some, although thankfully not most. Those eyes have no right to judge her sexuality, as it does not and will not affect them in any way. I will fight to my dying day for her right to be who she is, and to protect that right.

Today, I reaffirm my support for the progress that the Parliament has made in bringing about equality for all across the LGBT+ community. That progress must be built on, and we must continue to stand up for LGBT+ rights around the globe.