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 2875 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Ryan McQuigg, what is your view?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Paul Johnston, that does not make it sound as though there is as seamless an operation between the different agencies as you indicated. Do you want to comment on that?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Usefully, the Auditor General has summarised on page 5 of his briefing the different areas of responsibility belonging to the UK Government, the Scottish Government and local government. It is clear that the vast majority of levers remain in the hands of the UK Government, which of course does not mean that the Scottish Government and local government are absolved from the actions that they take. How can the Scottish Government and local authorities make a shift towards more preventative action at the same time as helping children who are living in poverty?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Yes, please.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
It sounds like Paul Johnston is offering himself as the go-to person if people come across any silos or barriers.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
I am the MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
My questions are an extension of what we have been talking about. The Scottish Government and local government have key roles and it is important that they work well together. Do they work well together? Do they work well with their third sector partners? Is there evidence of a shift away from the silos that used to exist—are they being broken down? Are we seeing joined-up thinking and joined-up working? Bill Scott might like to comment.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Perhaps Hanna McCulloch might be keen to come in at that point.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Colin Beattie
Paul Johnston, you are an obvious person to bring in now, but can you comment on my original statement, which was about the fact that most of the levers sit with Westminster? How do we link in with Westminster’s child poverty policies? I have not seen them, but I presume that they exist. How can the Scottish Government link in with those to create an effective response? That also goes back to the question of how better preventative action can be taken in dealing with the current situation of children in poverty.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Colin Beattie
The Scottish Government is clearly doing everything that it can to support businesses, but how much capability is in its hands to make a truly significant impact on costs? Are we a big player in that regard, or are things out of our hands?
