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 1801 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
The BBC in Scotland has a fantastic resource in the form of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Is BBC Radio Scotland making any significant use of that resource? Is a place being given, or should more of a place be given, to the orchestra’s output?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
I have a great deal of sympathy with what you are all saying. My point was anticipated by Professor Smith, who talked about how European countries manage the issue. NRK in Norway—I do not know whether you were possibly alluding to another country—has several national radio stations for different types of music, so you can listen at any time of day to jazz, classical or folk music, as well as a news channel and so on. Is it realistic for BBC Scotland to try to shove all that stuff into, essentially, one frequency? Why are we not looking to have more frequencies with more diversity of music, instead of trying to save a couple of hours a week?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
You were talking about multiple frequencies and so on.
Meeting of the Parliament
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
For the record, my understanding is that no one in the independence movement would suggest that all laws since 1707 be unpicked or repealed on independence day. However, does the member agree that one of the distressing things about this bill is that it proposes to do exactly that with something in the region of 4,000 pieces of extant law?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
I will address my question to Donald MacKinnon. One thing that often gets lost in the debate is how modest crofter incomes are. Could you say a bit about making crofter incomes more viable through a new form of agriculture, where that balance would lie and what we should be doing to recognise the environmental benefits of crofting?
On the back of that, Pete Ritchie raised an interesting point, which you might want to talk about, about prioritising grass-fed livestock. How practical would such a policy be in large parts of the crofting counties?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on NHS Western Isles’ recruitment of a new permanent general practitioner and hospital doctor for the islands of Barra and Vatersay. (S6O-01915)
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
As the cabinet secretary is aware, our health service is under a huge amount of pressure, and the long-term use of locums, as has been the case in Barra for some time, is not ideal. Connected to that matter, can the cabinet secretary confirm when the Scottish Government will take a decision on the healthcare outline business case to allow the proposal for a new home for health and other services in Barra to move to stage 2?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
The Government has already committed to introducing legislation to make remote electronic monitoring mandatory on scallop dredge and pelagic vessels. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, during a period in which there are likely to be changes in how we interact with the marine environment, we must ensure that fishers are recognised for the valuable role that they play?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
One issue that has been raised by the Scottish Refugee Council is arrivals and welcoming people effectively in a way that provides some of the information that we are talking about. I realise that some of this involves the co-operation of the UK Border Force, but the Scottish Refugee Council mentioned the lack of predictability of arrivals being one of the main challenges: it no longer receives any information from the UK Border Force and, therefore, has no access to pre-arrival information. I realise that that is for the UK Border Force to organise, but where does the Scottish Government come into the greeting and arrival process, and are you trying to overcome some of those co-ordination challenges?
