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
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
On both the 2006 and 2010 acts?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Thank you. We will keep the petition open and, in the first instance, make further inquiries, as suggested.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
As no other member has offered an alternative course of action, do we agree to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, as David Torrance recommended?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I thank the petitioner very much, but we will close the petition on the basis of the submission that we have received from the Scottish Government.
Our next meeting will take place on 17 November.
Meeting closed at 11:05.Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
The next petition for consideration is PE1897, on reforming certain procedures for the collection of council tax. The petition, which was lodged by Richard Anderson, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to reform the procedures for the collection of council tax that apply when a person has difficulty in making payment.
The SPICe briefing outlines the process of using summary warrants to enforce council tax debts. It explains that a summary warrant issues information to a judge, who will then grant it without any further investigation of individual circumstances. As a result of a summary warrant, a 10 per cent surcharge is added to the debts listed.
The Scottish Government’s response states that its policy is
“to ensure households that are financially vulnerable do not have to meet a Council Tax liability they are unable to afford”,
and highlights the council tax reduction scheme. It further states that around 500,000 households receive some level of council tax reduction, and of those households, 80 per cent receive a full reduction and are therefore not liable for council tax.
The protected trust deed—PTD—protocol commenced on 1 October 2021 and sets out non-statutory changes to the operational processes for protected trust deeds. The intention of the protocol is to improve transparency and clarity to better enable trustees to manage debtor and creditor expectations in a protected trust deed.
I invite colleagues to comment.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
How young you are. It is 31 years not 20 that some of us have been debating the issue—that is, every year since it was introduced.
Are there any other comments?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
The next petition for consideration is PE1898, on making entering someone’s home without their permission or without a warrant a crime. The petition, which was lodged by Julia Gow, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to make it a crime for a stranger to enter your home without permission or a warrant.
In its response, the Government sets out the current offences that relate to entering someone’s home without their permission. The submission confirms that
“While entering someone’s home without their permission is not a crime in and of itself, housebreaking with intent to steal is an aggravated form of the common law offence of theft in Scots law. The essential elements of this crime are that a person (1) overcomes the security of the premises and (2) does so with the intention of stealing.”
A number of other common-law or statutory offences might be used, including the common law offence of malicious mischief, the statutory offence of vandalism and a provision of section 57 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which criminalises
“Any person who, without lawful authority to be there, is found in or on a building or ... premises”
where
“it may reasonably be inferred”
that the person
“intended to commit theft there”.
11:00Additionally, the SPICe briefing highlights section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, as it sets out an offence of threatening or abusive behaviour, which might cover some situations where a person enters someone’s house without permission.
In her submission, the petitioner questions the “essential elements” of the aggravated form of theft in Scots law, which states that a person must both overcome the “security of the premises” and do so with the intent of stealing. She asks the committee to consider how being subject to either element of the crime can leave a person feeling safe and secure in their own home. The petitioner urges the committee to consider the mental trauma and loss of experiences as a result of having someone enter your home without permission.
Again, I invite members to comment.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jackson Carlaw
We appear to be agreed on that.
It is an odd coupling—sorry, that is probably an unfortunate suggestion. [Laughter.] Combining hedgehogs and moles in the petition struck me as a bit random. Nonetheless, we will consider them together, albeit that there will be representations from different organisations.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Thank you for that. It leads me to wonder about the autism services that are provided to an individual who does not have a learning disability or mental disorder. How do we ensure that a properly and sustainably funded resource is available to that group of autistic individuals?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Good morning, and welcome to the fifth meeting in 2021 of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.
Under agenda item 1, I want to welcome a new committee member who is replacing Tess White. Although she was not with us for very long, I very much thank Ms White for her contribution to the committee, and I know that she will have an on-going interest in a number of the petitions in which she was involved.
We have now been joined by Alexander Stewart. Mr Stewart, do you have any interests to declare before assuming your position?
