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 812 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Convener, could I ask a supplementary question?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
You talked about assessment. We have heard views from care-experienced young people and some neurodiverse young people who felt that there were some positives from the Covid period. What sorts of things are happening on the ground? What kinds of things are now in place that were not there previously for such young people?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
What are the biggest challenges that you come up against?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I thank the panel for being here this morning. As the constituency MSP for Uddingston and Bellshill, I am delighted to hear the positive talk about North Lanarkshire Council. It is great that the council has committed to such challenging targets. A lot of local people might not recognise that names such as Airdrie and Glenboig come from Gaelic—and people in the area predominantly spoke Gaelic in the 11th and 12th centuries. People in the central belt forget that.
I am interested in the commitment in the NLC documents to equal respect—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Just to be specific, do you expect that, once the current plan concludes, the next plan will actually allow parents to have that choice for their children from five years of age? Do you expect things to move that quickly, or will things take a bit longer?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Yes. There is a commitment to equal respect for Gaelic and English. Jim Whannel has said that everyone who wishes to have their children educated in Gaelic can have that and that that is the aim. How far along the road do North Lanarkshire Council’s plan and commitments take us if the council is successful in achieving that? How far does that plan get us towards the aim of parents being able to choose for their children at the age of five?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
In response to Dr Gulhane, I want to make a wee comment about vaping. As someone who has given up smoking and currently vapes, I have personal experience. Statistically, you are twice as likely to give up smoking using vaping as you are using nicotine gum. The nicotine is pretty harmless in that form and you do not get the carbon monoxide and so on. Therefore, I think that there is a balance to be struck, as well. We do not have the information and evidence to back it up yet, but the consensus across the NHS and elsewhere seems to be that vaping is much less harmful than smoking cigarettes. On a balanced approach, having more people vaping and more patients who have been long-term smokers switching to vaping could have a really positive impact overall.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you. Convener, it would be great to have some more information, and perhaps some written information, on the Gypsy Traveller work. That would be fantastic.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you very much, convener—we got there. I thank the witnesses for attending.
In evidence, we have heard about the effects of proportionate universalism and about the inverse care law—the fact that the people who are most in need of our services are often the most likely to miss out on them because they do not turn up for tests, X-rays or hospital appointments. Is the minister supportive of the concept of proportionate universalism? How is Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s work influencing her approach to tackling health inequalities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is really helpful. Stigma and trauma have a huge impact on the most deprived people. In his evidence, Dr Peter Cawston spoke about safety netting, which was interesting. He also spoke about the chance 2 change project group, which is now working alongside the Scottish Government to help people to help each other to make a difference to their health and wellbeing. Do you have any comments on that? Can you give us a bit more information on it?
