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 1551 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
We will now move on to questions from Paul McLennan.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
I understand that things such as sexual health, women’s hormones and sexual consent are often taboo to talk about, but coercive control is quite hard to describe in the hearing world as it is. We know that those discussions are often hard to have in the public space, so should we be more cognisant, particularly in public services, of the need to be more active in reaching out to deaf communities, and that materials have to be in BSL?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
That is really interesting, Jemina, because if you do not have the language for it, how do you communicate it? That is a really pertinent point. Thank you for that.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
We move to questions from Maggie Chapman.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
I was also thinking about the preventative work that you have spoken about and that early-years intervention. That would be covered as well.
Another side—which you touched on, Jemina—is the education of perpetrators. In what you have said today, I hear trauma for deaf mothers and their children, pressure on courts and access to legal aid and solicitors. All that is because of male perpetrator behaviour. That is why we are doing this. There is service pressure and the need for domestic abuse advisers for deaf women. Have you been able to share your report with the people who do some of the work on challenging misogyny and male perpetrator behaviour?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
Before we move on, I will pick up on a point that Tess White made. The committee highlighted in our post-legislative scrutiny of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 that there should be parity with Gaelic. I am paying attention to what you have said about that. If there was parity of investment in deaf and BSL services, would that support a lot of what you have said today and what is contained in your report?
Lucy is signing, “Yes, no question.”
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
Our second agenda item is a consideration of the findings of a joint research report on the perspectives of deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on deaf families, by Professor Jemina Napier, Dr Claire Houghton, Lucy Clark and Tasnim Ahmed, which was published in December 2025. At this point, I make a declaration of interest, in that I wrote the foreword to the report. I am grateful to have been given that opportunity, and I put that on the record. The research report came to the attention of the committee during its inquiry in early 2025 into the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015.
I refer members to papers 1 and 2, and I welcome to the meeting three authors of the report: Professor Jemina Napier from Heriot-Watt University, Dr Claire Houghton from the University of Edinburgh and Lucy Clark from LCC Scotland. You are all very welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We have scheduled up to an hour and a half for the discussion. We have not scheduled any breaks, but please indicate to me or the clerk if a break would be helpful.
Before we move to questions, I invite you all to make an opening statement. We will start with Jemina.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
That is great, thank you so much, Lucy.
10:15
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
I am cognisant of the fact that we are now an hour into this evidence session, and we still have half an hour to go, so I just want to check whether we are okay or whether anyone needs a comfort break. Do we need to suspend briefly for a few minutes, or are we all good?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”
Meeting date: 3 March 2026
Karen Adam
Thank you for that, Lucy. Some of the most disturbing evidence that you have presented relates to children being used as interpreters. When the police arrive on the scene, children as young as six or seven are having to communicate between their mother and the police and describe very traumatic incidents that have happened. We, as a committee, certainly need to reflect on that, because it is just outrageous that that is happening.
