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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 433 contributions
|
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Tackling Poverty and Building a Fairer Scotland
Meeting date: 8 June 2021
Natalie Don-Innes
I welcome you to your new role, Presiding Officer. I also welcome the cabinet secretary to her new role.
I am proud to be standing here in our Parliament to give my first speech on a matter that is extremely close to my heart. Before I go on, I give a heartfelt thanks to the people who made that possible: my family, my fantastic campaign team and all the voters. I am honoured to represent the constituency in which I have lived my whole life and that I love so much.
Renfrewshire North and West is a beautiful constituency. It is rich in history, from Erskine, on the banks of the Clyde, to the historic town of Renfrew, and it contains many beautiful villages, from Kilmacolm to Bishopton. However, it is the people of Renfrewshire North and West who make it such a wonderful place.
In relation to today’s debate, poverty stretches right across my constituency. People are impacted deeply by poverty, whether they are in Gallowhill or Bridge of Weir. I am pleased to see the huge steps that the Scottish Government is taking to eradicate poverty, with real targets and policies that benefit people’s lives. There is certainly more to do, but introducing the Scottish child payment, free school meals and best start payments, widening access to childcare, removing financial barriers to education and empowering and enabling women to take up employment are just some of the ways that we are raising the bar. I am thrilled that the Scottish National Party won an election standing on bold policies such as introducing a citizens basic income and a minimum citizens wage guarantee. Such policies will genuinely make our country fairer and make a real difference to people’s lives.
However, while we give to families through the Scottish child payment, Westminster takes money away from the same families through the removal of the £20 uplift to universal credit, which is set to plunge even more children in this country into poverty.
I believe that we all want to raise attainment, tackle drug and alcohol abuse, protect jobs, improve mental health and create a greener environment. Those progressive moves will become more achievable not if but when we eradicate poverty, and we can do that only with full powers over welfare, employment, drug policy, defence and many other matters. When someone is living meal to meal, day to day, with no money, life is a struggle. Planning every penny really takes it out of someone, and too often that impacts on other parts of life. Living in poverty is tiring. What should be simple things in life, such as weekly shops and buying clothes for the kids, become hard, laborious and, at times, impossible tasks. It is no wonder that poverty can lead to addiction, mental health problems and even suicide.
We can take our climate emergency, which is the most pressing issue on our planet right now, as an example. For someone who has just been sanctioned for being late to the job centre, or who is fighting addiction after years of neglect or mental health problems, I am sure that recycling is not always a top priority.
We must also consider the children who are living in poverty. How many members know how hard it is to keep your mind on your schoolwork when you are worrying about where your dinner is coming from that night, or what state your parents will be in when you get home from school? How fast does that make a child have to grow up?
Poverty is not a choice, and it is certainly not inevitable. It is a lifestyle that is inflicted on people. No child should grow up hungry in Scotland. We have food banks and homeless people while the United Kingdom spends billions of pounds on palaces, boats and nuclear missiles. That is 21st century Great Britain for you.
Tony Blair did not end child poverty, David Cameron and Nick Clegg normalised it and now Boris Johnson encourages it. We will never see an end to child poverty while we are tied to the UK Government.
The Scottish Government can make bold move after bold move, but we cannot mitigate everything. That is why it must be our mission in our Scottish Parliament to give the people what they voted for—an independence referendum—so that we can get those vital powers away from out-of-touch politicians in London and into the hands of the people of Scotland.
I will finish by saying this to anyone who has experienced or is experiencing poverty, anyone going to food banks, anyone from a bad background, any child who does not understand why this is happening to them and who questions why they were born into this life, and anyone who thinks that the system is against them: please do not give up. I am living proof that you can make it out the other side of the UK Government’s complete neglect of Scotland’s working class and its underclass. I will not abstain on you. Until we see an end to child poverty in an independent Scotland, I promise that I have your back and I am fighting for you.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Decision Time
Meeting date: 2 June 2021
Natalie Don-Innes
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am having technical issues. I would have voted no and I ask that that be logged.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Oaths and Affirmations
Meeting date: 13 May 2021
Natalie Don-Innes
made a solemn affirmation.
