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 786 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Mercedes Villalba
Police Scotland’s international development and innovation unit continues to provide training to some of the world’s most serious human rights abusers. In Colombia, where there is evidence of human rights abuses being committed by the national police, including the killing of protesters, Police Scotland officers continue to provide training. Given the evidence of human rights abuses being committed by the national Colombian police, can the First Minister explain why the Scottish Government approved the deployment of Police Scotland officers to Colombia?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Mercedes Villalba
Will the minister commit today to undertaking an impact assessment of the e-consult system and how it has affected the provision and quality of patient care at Old Aberdeen?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Mercedes Villalba
In the face of opposition from patients and staff, Old Aberdeen medical practice was put out to tender, and that has resulted in declining standards of patient care for many of my constituents. One example is the roll-out of an e-consult system to arrange GP appointments online. That should have allowed patients to request an appointment at any time but, in reality, it has left many struggling to access the care that they need, including one constituent who contacted me when she was 30 weeks pregnant and unable to get an appointment through the e-consult system. That is an unacceptable deterioration of what was a highly effective and popular practice.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Mercedes Villalba
To ask the Scottish Government what impact assessments it has made of any increased use of online appointments on patients’ access to GP services. (S6O-01022)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any potential impact on its Covid recovery strategy of its decision to end the universal provision of lateral flow tests. (S6O-00994)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
Presiding Officer,
“Energy is not a luxury; people have to be able to heat their homes. That is why it is so important that we do everything that we can, within our powers and resources, to help people to do that.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2022; c 24.]
Those were the First Minister’s words in the chamber last month. Labour-run North Ayrshire Council is tackling rising energy costs by pioneering publicly owned energy production, but we need that kind of ambition on a national scale. Will the Scottish Government look again at a model of publicly owned energy for the whole of Scotland?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
One of the stated aims of the Scottish Government’s Covid recovery strategy is to improve access to services where provision was restricted by the pandemic. Although health and social care workers will continue to be able to access free lateral flow tests, other front-line workers from teachers to hospitality staff will no longer have access to them for routine workplace testing. That could lead to access to services such as schools and restaurants being disrupted, especially as Scotland’s infection rates remain high. Will the Government consider expanding access to free lateral flow tests to all front-line workers to ensure a fair and safe Covid recovery?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Blue Carbon
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement.
How can we take the Scottish Government’s commitment to net zero seriously when it repeatedly misses its climate targets, and then releases a statement like today’s about something that it has already announced but has failed to do?
I will explain. In November last year, the blue carbon international policy challenge that the minister has just announced was announced by another minister. I have here the press release from November, which states that the policy challenge will run from January to March 2022. Well, we are now in April 2022, so why was the challenge delayed? What is the new timeline? Why was that information not included in the statement?
The Scottish Government has also previously committed to provide £150,000 through the nature restoration fund to support the establishment of specialist blue carbon research. Applications closed earlier this month for the second round of the nature restoration fund. Is the minister able to update us on whether any applications relating to blue carbon research were received and, if so, how they are being progressed? If no applications have been received, when does the minister envisage that that £150,000 that was reserved for blue carbon research will be allocated?
Finally, the minister referred to the Scottish Government’s pledge that it will designate at least 10 per cent of Scotland’s seas as highly protected marine areas by 2026, with blue carbon protection being one of the criteria that will be used to identify sites. Can the minister give an update on what progress has been made in selecting sites for highly protected marine areas to ensure blue carbon protection?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to bring down the cost to tenants of private rent in the coming year. (S6F-01011)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mercedes Villalba
Although the Scottish Government’s commitment to introducing rent controls is welcome, rents are rising right now, so tenants cannot afford to wait for three or more years for action. Rightly, the First Minister has called for more action from the United Kingdom Government to help to tackle the cost of living crisis, but this Parliament has powers to address one of the biggest pressures that is faced by people in Scotland right now: rising rent costs. Already, some councils have taken the positive step of introducing rent freezes for social tenants. Will the First Minister commit today to exploring the implementation of an emergency rent freeze to support all renters in Scotland?
