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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 3656 contributions
|
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
I understand the substance of the question, but I am not sure that it is consistent with the petition that we have before us, which is quite specifically a petition in relation to the Scottish Government. I am not sure that that action would be competent in the sense of being within the reach of the petition itself or whether it would have to be the subject of a fresh petition. However, I am willing to take a view from colleagues on that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Could we take forward Mr Ewing’s proposal but combine it with your suggestion? We could perhaps express the view on behalf of the committee that we felt that that was the wrong action for the Government to take, and that, in closing the petition, we would welcome a final report from it in relation to the questions that you have posed? Would that satisfy you?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Yes, it is a comprehensive series of asks.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
A9 Dualling Project
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
In your previous answer, you drew an analogy with mountains—I am not sure whether that was simply because you knew that we would now be turning to Edward Mountain.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
A9 Dualling Project
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
That draws our questions to an end. Would you like to add anything that we have not touched on?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
A9 Dualling Project
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
I thank you very much for joining us and for the candour with which you have addressed the committee’s questions. I am grateful for your time.
I suspend the meeting briefly for us to rearrange the table.
10:34 Meeting suspended.10:36 On resuming—
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
We have that—thank you.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Our next petition is PE2031, which has been lodged by Maria Aitken on behalf of the Caithness Health Action Team. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that children and young people in Scotland who have type 1 diabetes and would benefit from a life-saving insulin pump are provided with one, no matter where they live.
I am reminded that that was a key issue in the very first session of Parliament in which I was elected, from 2007 to 2011; it is always intriguing to see how things develop. At that point, insulin pumps had just come on the scene, and we were very keen to have them made available through the NHS.
I welcome again Edward Mountain, who has remained with us since our earlier discussion on the A9 inquiry as he has an interest in this petition. I will invite him to say a few words in a moment.
The committee last considered the petition on 20 September 2023. At that time, we agreed to write to Diabetes Scotland, the Insulin Pump Awareness Group and the NHS regional health boards. The committee has received responses from eight of the 14 health boards, copies of which are included in our meeting papers.
A number of the responses refer to utilising additional Scottish Government funding to increase the number of children and young people who are accessing insulin pump therapy and the need for further Scottish Government funding to support on-going staffing and resource requirements that are now necessary to meet the demand for insulin pump therapy. It is also the case that, since the third session of Parliament, from 2007 to 2011, the incidence of diabetes has continued to increase dramatically within the population.
We have received a response from Diabetes Scotland that highlights the benefits of diabetes technology for people with type 1 diabetes, which include the improvement of blood sugar management and a reduced risk of complications such as stroke, eye damage and kidney disease. The response draws our attention to the “Diabetes Tech Can’t Wait” report, which Diabetes Scotland published in November last year. The report includes a number of recommendations to the Scottish Government and to health boards to support the faster roll-out of diabetes tech, with the aim of ensuring that 100 per cent of children and 70 per cent of adults living with type 1 diabetes are able to use hybrid closed-loop tech by 2030.
Before I invite the committee to share thoughts on how we might proceed, I invite Edward Mountain to comment.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Do not get me wrong—some of those things are required, and we have distinguished between the different operations that we have. It is important to say that we talk about commissioners, but in some cases we are talking about a commission full of commissioners. Even the language that is used for the office that people occupy is not equal.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scotland’s Commissioner Landscape
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Yes, I think that that would be the case. Those budget requests are largely about requirements for additional staff to exercise functions. In some cases, it can be that the work of the commissioner has become better known, which has prompted many more public inquiries of that commissioner, and those inquiries have to be tackled. It could be that a commissioner has been given additional responsibilities by the Government and they have to have the resource in place to tackle those responsibilities.
With regard to scrutiny of the outcomes for public benefit, the corporate body takes the view that it is very much the responsibility of the subject committees to take that forward. Our responsibility is to ensure that the housekeeping within the actual commission is effective, that it represents a good use of public money, and that public money is being carefully managed.
