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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Good morning, and welcome to this meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. If you are joining us this morning, it is a great pleasure to have you with us.
Our first agenda item is a declaration of interests following the resignation from the committee of Carol Mochan. I am sorry to say that Carol was with us for only a short time, but we very much appreciated her contribution and her valuable insights to the work of the committee during her time with us. I have pleasure in welcoming to the committee, in her place, Foysol Choudhury MSP. The first item of business this morning is to invite Mr Choudhury to declare any relevant interests.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Thank you. So any interests that you have are as they are recorded in the register of members’ interests.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
PE1949, which was lodged by Alexander James Dickson, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the rules regarding MSPs with a dual mandate and to legislate to bring the Scottish Parliament in line with the Senedd and Stormont by preventing MSPs from holding a dual mandate in time for the next Scottish Parliament elections.
We previously considered the petition on 9 November, when we agreed to write to the Welsh Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Electoral Reform Society. We also noted the Scottish Government’s view that the matter is one for the Parliament to consider.
We have now received responses from our colleagues in other devolved institutions. Members will have noted that the United Kingdom Government introduced legislation to prevent a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from simultaneously being a member of the UK House of Commons or of the lower house of the Irish Parliament. Similar legislation in Wales was introduced by the Senedd Commission, which is the equivalent of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. It appears that, if the Scottish Government has no appetite to pursue the matter, we should consider what options are available to allow the Parliament to give the matter further consideration.
I always observe that ministers hold a dual mandate, in that they have a second responsibility as well as that of being an MSP.
Do colleagues have any suggestions?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
For the record, I state that I am a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, even though, in this instance, the recommendation is to send the petition to a different committee.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Is that advice being given only to motorcyclists or to tourists in general?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I wonder whether, when we write to the Scottish Government, we could, in addition, ask on what basis it is satisfied that the regulation is being properly implemented or how it would evidence that that is the case.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Do we agree with that suggestion? Having investigated that speculatively, I understand that it could be later in the autumn before the opportunity arises, which I suppose would allow us to pursue any outcomes that might be forthcoming from the on-going investigations, so that we have all that information before us at the time of the debate. Are we agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I suggest that, just in case the current Deputy First Minister is not familiar with all the issues for whatever reason, we restate some of what we said in the letter to the previous Deputy First Minister and the response that we received at that time, to underpin why we now seek to meet the Deputy First Minister herself.
David, do you want to add to that?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
PE1945, lodged by Elizabeth Otway, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to place a legal ban on the extraction of peat and on peat imports, exports and sales in order to protect peatlands in Scotland and worldwide.
The Scottish Government’s submission from last November highlights the fact that the revised draft national planning framework 4 prohibits new commercial peat extraction except in limited circumstances. Since that submission was received, NPF4 has been approved.
In its submission, the Scottish Government said that it had been working with the industry to understand “transitional issues” and that a consultation to remove peat from Scottish horticulture was expected to begin in December 2022 but that it would not be possible to implement a sales ban by 2023. The submission said that a
“delivery plan and timetable for phasing out horticultural peat”
would be developed after the consultation responses had been analysed and discussions with industry and environmental non-governmental organisations had taken place. The Scottish Government consultation was launched in February, in fact, and it closes shortly, on 12 May.
The Scottish Crofting Federation’s submission urges the Scottish Government to restrict any ban on peat to horticultural sales and imports and the commercial extraction of peat for burning, while protecting the traditional rights of crofters to extract peat on a small scale for personal use.
Do members have any questions or comments?
09:45Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Do other colleagues want to comment?
