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 1560 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
At the moment, there is a craze for the carnivore, paleo and keto diets. A particularly successful group sticks in my mind. It sprang up during Covid and took hold of social media post-Covid. There is evidence on those diets from doctors in the States, who quote a Harvard University study. In social media questionnaires on the keto and paleo diets, people say that they are taking control and getting their nutrients from red meat and eggs. That flies in the face of what you say in your report, which is that people should eat less red meat.
Do you have a view on that yet, or will you take it to your board, which is listening to what is going on? As I said, that type of diet is taking a huge hold right now.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
Good morning, Dr Cass. Is there, in the 32 recommendations in what is a very comprehensive report, anything specific in relation to the delivery of services that you believe could apply in a Scottish context?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
I turn to my second question. In your answer to Ruth Maguire’s question, you talked about the importance of the evidence base and collaboration. How do you feel about the fact that certain factions of the Scottish Green Party have said that your work is a “social murder charter”?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
That is good, thank you. Are you looking at search engines when updating your website, so that it becomes a go-to site?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
Thank you for coming. I have two questions, which build on those that David Torrance asked. Has Food Standards Scotland undertaken any work to influence the school curriculum? As David said, children are more likely to go on social media and apps such as TikTok and Instagram, in particular. Is your work having an impact on the school curriculum?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
Sorry—are you aware that that is going on?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
Getting your nutrients from red meat flies in the face of evidence that says, “eat less red meat”, and counteracts the point about heavily processed food.
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Tess White
A major cyberattack on NHS Scotland in 2022 crippled NHS systems and disrupted services. What steps were implemented to prevent a major breach like that from happening again and why did they fail?
Meeting of the Parliament
New Energy Infrastructure in the North of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Tess White
I am pleased to have secured parliamentary time to raise the issue of plans for massive transmission infrastructure in the north of Scotland. Thank you to all members who supported the motion.
The proposals in question, which have been put forward by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Transmission, include a new 400KV pylon route from Kintore to Tealing in the north-east, as well as two new substations. If plans are allowed to go ahead, that towering and sprawling infrastructure will puncture our countryside and industrialise our rural communities. It will affect our hugely productive farmland in the north-east, which is seen as the bread basket of Scotland and boasts malting barley, soft fruit, bulbs and field vegetables. It will impact the local economy, and there are concerns about not only the financial implications but the implications for community wellbeing.
The public gallery is full of representatives from the affected communities, and I thank them for coming today. They have travelled from Angus and Aberdeenshire to protest outside the Scottish Parliament because they feel utterly disillusioned with and disenfranchised by this process.
We are told that this new infrastructure is needed for the connection of ScotWind offshore wind projects in the North Sea. The Scottish Government has exclusive discretion to approve and deny applications for offshore wind in Scotland and Scottish waters. There is already too much energy being licensed into the grid, far too few connections and an insufficient transfer mechanism, yet the first ScotWind leasing round allocated more offshore wind than anyone expected. In other words, the Scottish National Party Government sold it cheaply and it sold off much more than was needed.
Little thought was given by the SNP Government to the transmission network and the infrastructure required to land the power from those projects in the north of Scotland. It is no wonder that the Climate Change Committee concluded that the Scottish Government has failed
“to bring to the Scottish people, and the Scottish Parliament, a climate change plan that is fit for purpose.”
We are all keenly aware of the challenge that Scotland and the United Kingdom face as we continue down the road to net zero. We know that we need to decarbonise our electricity system, but many of the people who will live and work in the shadow of those monster pylons or next to the whopping substations do not feel that they are being helped along that road. For them, this is an unjust transition.
To reach net zero, we need joined-up thinking between the Scottish Government and transmission operators such as SSEN, as well as close working with local stakeholders. We need careful, consistent and considered engagement with affected communities, but that simply has not been the case.
Meeting of the Parliament
New Energy Infrastructure in the North of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Tess White
I thank Audrey Nicoll for giving way and for speaking in today’s debate, because one of the things that concerned me and my constituents was that, without Michael Marra’s support, the debate would not have happened today and the subject would not have been aired. Why did Audrey Nicoll and her colleagues not support the motion to have the debate?
