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 1144 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Justice System
Meeting date: 10 June 2021
Rhoda Grant
I pay tribute to my colleagues Katy Clark and Foysol Choudhury, who made their first speeches in Parliament today. They were excellent and moving speeches. That reminds us all that, although colleagues whom we miss very much stepped down or retired at the end of the previous session, we see new people coming forward and feeding in fresh ideas and new perspectives, which renews the chamber and is good for us all. I am really pleased that those colleagues are here, and it was delightful to listen to their contributions to the debate.
I pay tribute to our police officers and, indeed, to all emergency workers and all those who have been on the front line during the Covid pandemic. The police, emergency workers and prison officers have had to face the dangers of the pandemic and have not been able to keep themselves safe. They have done that on our behalf, and we should all be grateful to them.
Our amendment focuses very much on violence against women, and I will start with that subject. We all know that inequality leads to violence against women, and we need society to deal with that inequality. Despite justice interventions, violence against women continues to grow. Our whole justice system is geared towards keeping citizens safe, yet women are expected to protect themselves from predatory males. If they fail to do that, our justice system apportions blame to them instead of holding the attacker totally responsible.
Pauline McNeill made that point when she talked about the tragic case of Sarah Everard. One of the things that was pointed out to us all when Sarah Everard went missing was that she was walking home late at night—as if she should not have been out late at night. Pauline made the point that women should not be forced to stay at home at night just because men are unable to behave themselves properly and leave women alone. The public outcry around that case was rightly loud. Even in the situation of a pandemic, women gathered to take back the streets. Although I would never encourage anyone to take risks during a pandemic, I absolutely understood what they were trying to do. We need to join forces—not just the women in the chamber, but the men as well—to make sure that those voices are heard and that we change our society’s whole outlook on violence against women.
Domestic abuse also continued to increase during the pandemic—it was 5.7 per cent higher last year than in 2015-16. That emphasised how distance from and access to services were initially huge problems for domestic abuse services, which required to keep their own staff safe as they tried to support those who needed their support. The Robert Gordon University looked at the north-east and Orkney, and it pointed out that telephone services were really helpful in that respect because they could have someone available at the end of a phone at any point. We need to look at the lessons that were learned and carry them forward.
Katy Clark talked about the need for domestic abuse courts, which I have pushed for for a long time. They work well where they are, but we need them all over Scotland. Just because someone lives in a rural area, they should not—
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 9 June 2021
Rhoda Grant
The Scottish Government has failed our island communities. It has failed to provide the new ferries that are required and to maintain the ones that it has, which has led to the current fiasco. At a time when capacity is 35 per cent of what it would normally be, will the cabinet secretary commit to leasing the MV Pentalina, buying the ferry that has been identified by the Mull community and identifying further tonnage that will meet demand and create the capacity that is required on our islands?
Meeting of the Parliament
Urgent Questions
Meeting date: 14 May 2021
Rhoda Grant
Thank you, Presiding Officer, and welcome to your new role.
I echo the concern that tourism, especially the staycation market, will be badly hit if Moray and Glasgow are behind the rest of the country. However, other businesses also depend on tourism, which makes up part of their income. I therefore ask whether they will qualify for support. I also reiterate the call for discretionary money for councils to ensure that businesses that fall through the safety net can receive money from their local councils, and I reiterate the call to ensure that the money is sufficient to allow them to survive.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Oaths and Affirmations
Meeting date: 13 May 2021
Rhoda Grant
took the oath and repeated it in Gaelic.
