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 1445 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
I will come back quickly on that point before I go on to my third question. On primary healthcare, under the 2018 general practitioner contract, rural areas are massively negatively affected. I raise that issue because of the huge number of practices that are closing, threatening to close or handing back their contracts. Primary healthcare is at the front end of our health and social care system. Do you have any comment on that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
Professor O’Hagan has indicated to the convener that she would like to come in. One of the issues that has been raised with the committee is legal aid, and we are considering the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill. That issue is front and centre as well.
Convener, can Professor O’Hagan come in?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
The jury is out and it is not happening, but you have hope.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
I have three questions on the top priorities—two for Professor O’Hagan and one for Jan Savage. It was good to hear you say, Professor O’Hagan, that, in your work, you are responsive to parliamentary business. I see this meeting as a check-in point with this important committee.
In the past, you have spoken about the importance of having
“a safe home ... decent food and good health and social care”.
Those are some of the key and important themes that we have been working on as a Parliament. However, given that we have the worst statistics on record for homelessness and poverty, with 40,000 homelessness applications in 2023 and 2024 and more than one in five Scots currently living in poverty, and given that hundreds of thousands of people are languishing on national health service waiting lists, is Scotland moving backwards on human rights?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
The point about the study that you did leads nicely on to my second question. As a north-east MSP, I am especially interested in rural proofing, and the committee has discussed that issue at length. When Dr Alison Hosie represented the SHRC at a meeting of the committee in October last year, she spoke powerfully about the issue. Your work in the Highlands has identified significant gaps in the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights. Dr Hosie highlighted big issues around access to healthcare, for example. It is clear that a lack of rural proofing by decision makers in Edinburgh is having a hugely detrimental impact on rural communities.
Will you say a bit more about the SHRC’s work in this area and the engagement that you have had with the Scottish Government on the importance of rural proofing?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
It sounds as if it is a huge crisis now and women feel that they are being let down. Monitoring is very important, because you cannot manage what you do not measure, so you are measuring, but how are you making sure that the issue is front and centre as one of the Scottish Government’s top priorities?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Tess White
I have a question and a follow-up, convener. The committee will be considering the Scottish budget in February. Do you have any comment to make on the Scottish Government’s approach to human rights budgeting and on the scrutiny of the budget by parliamentary committees?
Meeting of the Parliament
Migration System
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Tess White
Presiding Officer, will I get the time back?
Meeting of the Parliament
Migration System
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Tess White
The minister says that it is an important part of the role of Government to use interventions, but what about the fact that a quarter of the working-age population in Scotland is inactive because of ill health?
