Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Displaying 876 contributions

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Meeting of the Parliament

Scottish Constitution

Meeting date: 27 June 2023

Foysol Choudhury

The debate could have been used to discuss the crisis in our NHS and how children are having to wait months for routine medical tests or to discuss how to help students who are threatened with homelessness because of rising energy costs and housing supply issues. We could have discussed education reform, which is much needed, or local government budget cuts. Instead, we are debating independence again. The document brings nothing new to the table; in fact, it is the fourth of its kind.

Meeting of the Parliament

Scottish Constitution

Meeting date: 27 June 2023

Foysol Choudhury

No.

The Scottish Government could be tackling waiting times in the NHS, helping the people of Scotland to pay their bills or addressing social and health inequalities. However, as Willie Rennie mentioned, the SNP does not want to face the hard reality of the issues that people in Scotland face. That is why, as Sharon Dowey pointed out, we often struggle to get ministers to the chamber to address such issues.

Instead, the SNP is doubling down on the politics of division. Scottish Labour’s constitutional offer would strengthen devolution, not weaken or undermine it. It would ensure that the Government focused on the principle that power should be based as near as possible to the place in which it is exercised. It would focus on moving power into the hands of local authorities and communities.

Neil Bibby spoke about the £6 billion in cuts to local government budgets. Scottish Labour would ensure fairer funding for communities. That is the reality that Scottish Labour offers—not an ideological pipe dream of independence, which has little more support than it had in 2014.

Meeting of the Parliament

Topical Question Time

Meeting date: 20 June 2023

Foysol Choudhury

At the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee meeting last week, the minister praised the expertise and experience of the approximately 60 staff who now have no idea whether they will be paid or have a job. Is the minister concerned about the impact that those job losses will have on the implementation of DRS?

Meeting of the Parliament

First Minister’s Question Time

Meeting date: 15 June 2023

Foysol Choudhury

In February this year, the Minister for Community Safety confirmed that the car wash sector was high risk for labour exploitation. The minister also confirmed that 39 premises were attended by police across the country and that a number of offences were detected, and persons safeguarded.

In light of that, will the First Minister advise whether the Scottish Government would consider implementing a licensing scheme for car washes in Scotland to ensure that practices such as human trafficking and modern slavery are prevented in that trade?

Meeting of the Parliament

Portfolio Question Time

Meeting date: 15 June 2023

Foysol Choudhury

A recent Marine Conservation Society report noted that only 4 per cent of Scotland’s sewage discharge points are monitored. The overspilling of sewage and recent heavy rainfall have left water in Leith being potentially dangerous. Residents have no idea what impact that is having on their health or their environment. Will the cabinet secretary commit to having the water in Leith tested by a public body so that the residents can know the condition of their water?