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 984 contributions
|
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Katy Clark
The witnesses will have had the opportunity to look at the Lord Advocate’s statement. Do you believe that the scope of the Lord Advocate’s recent statement in relation to drug consumption rooms—and, in particular, any potential criminal offences—is sufficient? Do you have any concerns that staff or others might not have the reassurance that they need in order to be involved in such an initiative? Tracey McFall might be interested in commenting on that.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Katy Clark
Would any other witness like to come in on the specific point about the impact of policies such as decriminalisation on the number of problem drug users in Scotland—whether it is likely to decrease or increase the numbers or to have no impact? What are the implications for organised crime through the drugs trade?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Katy Clark
I have a clarification query for Kirsten Horsburgh. A lot of the drugs come from places such as Afghanistan and Colombia. What do you mean by regulation?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Katy Clark
I direct my question to Paul Traynor, in the first instance. Witnesses have argued that eligibility for the young carer grant should be extended to 19-year-olds. I understand that the Scottish Government is considering that. Is that a change that needs to be prioritised? If so, why?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Katy Clark
My question is for Emma Congreve. In your submission, in relation to child poverty, you state:
“we need to see much more focus on delivery of policies that have an evidenced route towards realising the targets, rather small allocations in different pockets which will not make a demonstrable difference.”
Will you explain in more detail how the Scottish Government should do this? Is there a danger that that approach might focus on policies that are easy to measure rather than on potentially more impactful policies that are difficult to measure?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Katy Clark
Will you say more on the first part of the question, about focusing more on an “evidenced route”? What does that mean for the Scottish Government?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Katy Clark
Thank you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Katy Clark
Two thirds of children in poverty are in families where someone works. Will employability programmes support more working families, or do you expect other policies to be more relevant in tackling poverty in working families?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Katy Clark
I presume that Neil Gray is the appropriate cabinet secretary to direct this question to, as it is on employability. Given that, as well as parents, there are other priority groups for employability programmes, how do you ensure that parents become a high priority for all delivery partners of the no one left behind strategy?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Justice Priorities
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Katy Clark
How do you go about assessing the potential impact of policies to ensure that resources are focused on the policies that are likely to have the biggest impact?
