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 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.
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 1448 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Child Payment
Meeting date: 30 May 2024
Marie McNair
I await the MIG report with interest.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Child Payment
Meeting date: 30 May 2024
Marie McNair
That is helpful. Stephen Sinclair, you touched on that earlier, so I do not think that you will want to come back in. Ruth Boyle, in your submission, and just a moment ago, you suggested that the Scottish child payment could be a building block of the minimum income guarantee. In what ways could the minimum income guarantee have a greater impact on child poverty than the Scottish child payment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Child Payment
Meeting date: 30 May 2024
Marie McNair
Good morning, and thanks for your time. I will cover the issue of extending eligibility, which has been touched on briefly. Which changes to eligibility would have the greatest impact on reducing poverty?
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
I thank the member for the intervention. I actually thought that you were standing up to concede your obvious double standards, given your £28,000 expenses scandal, but obviously not.
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
An apology was good enough for the Tories then, but it is not now.
The motion is a partisan move. It is not one made out of integrity or any morals. If it was, surely the Tories would have more to say on the fact that their party presided over Boris Johnson’s partygate scandal, the PPE scandal, the lobbying scandal and the bullying claims about senior members of the Cabinet and the crashing of the economy that has inflicted hardship on so many—to give just a few examples.
The Tories are a party of misusing taxpayers’ money and making misleading statements. This is clearly a hypocritical, partisan and self-interested move. If our Tory colleagues cared so much about doing what is right, they surely would have called out those in their own party for all their wrongdoings over their decades in charge—but they do not and never will. [Interruption.] If they cared about what was right, they would not be presiding over the two-child policy and its abhorrent rape clause, they would have acted to ensure that WASPI women were fully compensated, and they would not have turned their backs—[Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
Michael Matheson made a mistake and has apologised for it. He has, rightly, repaid the roaming charges in full, with no cost to the public purse. Even though the investigation has been tainted when it comes to natural justice, what is proposed is one—
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
No, not just now. I have just started.
What is proposed is one of the largest sanctions in the history of this Parliament. Michael Matheson has shown genuine remorse and has taken full responsibility for the serious matters that occurred. No person, regardless of their position, is immune to making mistakes, but I recognise and agree that elected members must be held to a very high standard, and I agree that Michael Matheson clearly made mistakes. This was a mistake, and he has clearly paid the price. It is not a matter over which to resign as an MSP.
If the price of a mistake is resignation, Douglas Ross should have resigned a long time ago, but we know that this motion is really—
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
My apologies, Presiding Officer.
It is the usual attempt, on the part of Mr Ross, to score political points instead of making a serious contribution to this Parliament, with aggressive, shouty behaviour that he should have left in the playground. Especially evident this time is the breathtaking hypocrisy contained in his contribution—which surely even he must have been aware of.
We remember when Mr Ross reluctantly apologised for the £28,000 expenses scandal debacle. There was no offer of resignation there—just a grovelling apology.
Meeting of the Parliament
Michael Matheson
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Marie McNair
I have taken an intervention. I am not taking any more.
There are two choices available to the Tories—was it a muddle or was it a fiddle? We accepted then Mr Ross’s version that it was just a muddle—but what a muddle it was. He was quoted in a newspaper article at the time as saying that he did not know why he failed to declare £28,000, and he added the following grovelling apology:
“This was a big mistake, by me, for which I’m deeply sorry. I know how badly I performed here and how much I’ve let people down and for that I’m very sorry.”
