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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COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
Item 4 is consideration of SSI 2022/64, on which we took evidence under item 2. Members should refer to paper 4 in our meeting pack, as well as the policy note that accompanies the regulations.
This is a negative instrument and the deadline for lodging a motion to annul is 19 April 2022. As outlined in the policy note, it expires some of the provisions in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Act 2020.
When the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the regulations on 1 March, it had no points to raise, and no motion to annul the regulations has been lodged to date. If no member wishes to make any comments, does the committee agree to make no recommendations on the regulations?
Members indicated agreement.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
The committee’s next meeting will be on 24 March, when we will continue to take evidence on the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill.
That concludes the public part of the meeting. We now move into private for consideration of our final item.
11:31 Meeting continued in private until 11:42.COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
That concludes our consideration of that agenda item. I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for their evidence today.
Agenda item 3 is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments that were considered in the previous agenda item and on two instruments on which we took evidence at our meeting on 24 February. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the Scottish statutory instruments listed under agenda item 3?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
Do members have any comments?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
It is important that we consider Scotland in comparison with the rest of the globe, if we have had that information in the past week.
I know that there are constant staff pressures on the national health service at the moment, but do we have any indication of when screening services—for example, breast screening for over-70s—will be fully back up and running?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
My other question relates to test and protect staff who have been working for the past 18 months and have been in touch with me in the past couple of days. They feel that the announcement last Tuesday was a kick in the teeth. Forgive me if this is wrong information, but the information that was relayed from them was that the health boards told them that funding was in place for test and protect until September. Therefore, there was an assumption that they would be in the roles until September and not out of a job in April. Can you give any clarity on that and the funding options?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2022 of the COVID-19 Recovery Committee.
This morning, we will conclude our evidence taking on the inquiry into excess deaths in Scotland since the start of the pandemic. I welcome to the meeting Humza Yousaf, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, and Professor Jason Leitch, national clinical director for the Scottish Government.
Cabinet secretary, would you like to make some short opening remarks before we move to questions?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you very much. What is your interpretation of the data on excess deaths during the pandemic? In particular, what is your view on Public Health Scotland’s submission, which says that
“from July 2021 onwards the pattern changed, with almost all causes of death being in excess”?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the cabinet secretary. I thank him and his supporting official for attending.
I suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.
10:12 Meeting suspended.10:19 On resuming—
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Siobhian Brown
Good morning and welcome to the eighth meeting in 2022 of the COVID-19 Recovery Committee. This morning, we will continue our inquiry into excess deaths in Scotland since the start of the pandemic.
I welcome Rob Gowans, policy and public affairs manager at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland; Lawrence Cowan, director of communications at Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland; Peter Hastie, policy and public affairs manager at Macmillan Cancer Support; Dr Lynda Fenton, consultant in public health medicine at Public Health Scotland; and Dr Francisco Perez-Reche from the institute for complex systems and mathematical biology in the school of natural and computing sciences at the University of Aberdeen. Thank you for giving us your time and for your written submissions.
This is the second of two sessions that we are holding to take evidence from stakeholders as part of our inquiry before we hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on 17 March.
Each member will have approximately nine to 10 minutes to speak to the panel and ask their questions. If you would like to respond on a particular issue that is being discussed, please type the letter R in the chat box and we will do our best to bring you in. I am keen to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to speak. I apologise in advance that, if time runs on too much, I may have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interest of brevity.
All our witnesses are appearing remotely. I ask you to briefly introduce yourselves, starting with Rob Gowans.
