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 2629 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
“The economic contribution of the Pharmaceuticals Sector in Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Colin Beattie
Pre Covid, which arrived a couple of years ago, was there more collaboration than there is post Covid?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
“The economic contribution of the Pharmaceuticals Sector in Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Colin Beattie
How do you approach collaborating with the NHS? There are many NHS boards. Do you have to approach them one by one?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
“The economic contribution of the Pharmaceuticals Sector in Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Colin Beattie
I am talking about them collaborating with the NHS.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
“The economic contribution of the Pharmaceuticals Sector in Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Colin Beattie
Is it hesitancy on the part of the NHS or on the part of industry?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
“The economic contribution of the Pharmaceuticals Sector in Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Colin Beattie
Less?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Colin Beattie
You say that you carried out a review. Is that available?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Colin Beattie
The report states that, in July 2020, the concept of remote jury centres was successfully piloted in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and it was implemented. The Scottish Government gave the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service an additional £12 million to implement the remote jury centre model. Was a value-for-money assessment carried out before that additional funding was required?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Colin Beattie
The pandemic drove a lot of innovative change. It would appear that the courts service and others have responded well to that. The Auditor General’s report states that remote balloting of jurors, which was part of that innovation,
“has now been made permanent”,
and that seems to make absolute sense. Are there any other changes that were introduced in response to the pandemic that either have been made permanent or you are considering making permanent?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Colin Beattie
Are there any areas in which you would like to see innovation but there are barriers to achieving it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Colin Beattie
I have not had the benefit of seeing that review, but, presumably, it came to some conclusions about how to mitigate those impacts. Maybe you could briefly give us an overview of that.
