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 4938 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 25 May 2023
John Swinney
Does the cabinet secretary acknowledge that, in addressing the point that Oliver Mundell has just made, there is a need to provide a long-term line of sight about what the stability and pattern of direct payments might be, because they will be critical to underpinning investment? Does she believe that she has adequate information available to her in order to provide, at this stage, any further clarity on that line of sight?
Meeting of the Parliament
Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 25 May 2023
John Swinney
No, I will not.
The second key commitment that has been given by the cabinet secretary is that there will be no cliff edges, which is a crucial assurance that the process will be managed. This Government is listening with care to rural Scotland and wants to understand how the dichotomies and difficulties can be resolved. The Government should not be attacked for that and nor should the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Connections Framework
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
John Swinney
Will the member accept an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Connections Framework
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
John Swinney
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Connections Framework
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
John Swinney
I am grateful to Mr Rennie for giving way. I suspect that Mr McKee would have made the same point that I will make. Let me reassure Mr Rennie that, in my Government experience, I led a very successful delegation of university principals to India, which resulted in significant opportunities based on the strength of those institutions and their willingness to work with the Government to promote Scotland overseas. I assure him that what he is calling for is being actively delivered by the fantastic people in Scottish Development International who serve Scotland overseas.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Connections Framework
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
John Swinney
Is it not absolutely absurd that the leader of the Brexit campaign, Nigel Farage, has admitted that Brexit was a total failure, yet the Scottish Conservatives are still insisting that it was an unmitigated success and that they are proud to own it?
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Connections Framework
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
John Swinney
Does the cabinet secretary agree that this debate has helped to cement the view within Parliament, among all shades of parliamentary opinion, that the network of international offices that we have on Scotland’s behalf, many of them set up by the Labour and Liberal Executive before this Government came to office, are a formidable asset for Scotland? Some of the critique that we have heard in recent months from the party over there—the Conservatives—will perhaps be silenced by the eloquence of this debate on the subject.
Meeting of the Parliament
Sustainable Food Supply
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
John Swinney
I am rather surprised that the Conservatives’ extremely lengthy amendment to the Government’s motion, which is in fact longer than the Government’s motion, contains absolutely no mention of Brexit. Does that perhaps lead us to believe that the Conservatives are now embarrassed by the impact of Brexit on the Scottish farming economy?
Meeting of the Parliament
Sustainable Food Supply
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
John Swinney
What does Rachael Hamilton say to NFU Scotland’s horticulture convener, Iain Brown, who has commented on the fact that crops are rotting in the fields of our country because there are not enough workers to harvest those products and who said that the Home Secretary’s rhetoric is making the situation worse?
Meeting of the Parliament
Sustainable Food Supply
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
John Swinney
Rachael Hamilton knows full well that those resources had to be deployed in order to assist in balancing the budget in the previous financial year because of the hyperinflation that was created by the Conservative Government in its September 2022 mini-budget. At that time, ministers gave a commitment—I believe that it still stands, although I am no longer a serving minister in the Scottish Government—that that money will be inserted into the budgets in due course, when the requirement is there for it to be paid. Therefore, I do not think that Rachael Hamilton should be going around the country spreading scare stories in the fashion that she has just done. [Interruption.]
