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 1505 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to tackle youth antisocial behaviour. (S6O-02238)
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
Does the cabinet secretary believe that the tensions arising from the 2020 act demonstrate that, under Westminster’s control, Scotland’s devolution settlement can be undermined at the whim of the UK Government, particularly by any hypothetical Secretary of State for Scotland who might harbour a scarcely concealed desire to act like a governor-general?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
Nobody, not least the elderly, should have to put up with harassment or intimidation. Sometimes, due to the age of the apparent offenders, it ends up being a multi-agency issue, as the cabinet secretary mentioned. There is sometimes a perception, including among some offenders, that little can be done to challenge them. What more can the Scottish Government do to help the police, social workers and schools work together with children, particularly those in the 12 to 16 age group?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Culture in Communities
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
The committee has talked a lot about the concept of social prescribing. In your last comments, Jemma Neville, you seemed to say that social prescribing works if you point people in the direction of something that they are already good at or interested in, which makes sense. If somebody goes to the doctor and says that they might be suffering from isolation but are good at singing, you point them in the direction of a choir.
I am putting words in your mouth. Are you saying that, rather than just directing people to go off and do something cultural, we have to find out what they are interested in and direct them to something that they are likely to want to do? That is not simple to do.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Culture in Communities
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
I was interested in what you said about the fact that a lot of the volunteering work is done by people who are already leading busy lives and have jobs. At the same time, you mentioned social isolation and loneliness. Is there any way of addressing the issue of isolation and loneliness and, at the same time, bringing in a wider, more diverse group of people into that type of volunteering? I do not pretend that that is a simple problem to solve, but I would be interested to hear any observations that you might have.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
I, likewise, view our product as world class. I have no difficulty in saying that.
As well as being stringent, regulation has to be workable. At present, we have multiple application processes involving the Crown Estate, the Government, SEPA, local authorities and everyone else. Griggs seemed to ask for a single process and document. Can you say more about what the Government is doing to respond to the recommendation on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
The issue of escapes from fish farms has been touched on. As well as regulation, the industry bears its own responsibility for that. Can you say a bit more about your plans for dealing with the specific issue of escapes and how you are going to tackle them in the future?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
One thing that has come up—or that has certainly been put to me—is that, when an escape takes place, it needs to be reported and information needs to be made available to the community in real time rather than weeks or months after the event. What can be done practically in regulation to make sure that the reporting to the community and other interests around about is done quickly?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
I have no idea what the ministers’ diaries are like. I agree that, ideally, it would be a minister, but we really should keep our minds open to the possibility that it would be an official at this very short notice, given the fact that much of what we are looking for is technical information.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Alasdair Allan
I will pick up on and amplify that point. Obviously, industry has a role in compliance, whether with regard to escapees or anything else. Without minimising the role of Government and legislation, do you know whether the picture is improving on the efforts that industry makes on compliance?
