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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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Thanks for making that comment. I hope that you will appreciate that it is our job to scrutinise all aspects of the bill, so we make no judgment on any of this; we need to ask the questions to come to an informed decision, as a committee. Your comments are helpful to the committee.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Mike Corbett has indicated that he would like to come in on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
I am deliberately leaving a pause for a volunteer.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
The next item is stage 1 evidence on the Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill. In previous meetings, we heard from two panels of witnesses, and we will hear from a further two panels today.
This member’s bill was introduced by Mark Griffin on 8 June 2023 and is currently going through stage 1 with our committee. The bill would create a Scottish employment injuries advisory council to advise the Scottish ministers on employment injuries assistance. The proposed council would have three functions: to report and draft regulations for employment injuries assistance, replacing the Scottish Commission on Social Security in that area; to report to the Parliament and ministers on any matter relevant to employment injuries assistance; and to carry out, commission, or support research into any matter relevant to employment injuries assistance.
I welcome our first panel. Norman Provan, Scotland’s associate director, employment relations, Royal College of Nursing, and Linda Somerville, deputy general secretary, Scottish Trades Union Congress, are joining us in person this morning. Good morning to you both. I also wish a very good morning to our three witnesses who are joining us online: Mike Corbett, national official, NASUWT; Lorna Glen, regional officer, Unite the Union, Scotland; and John McKenzie, regional secretary, Scotland, Fire Brigades Union.
There are a few points to mention about this morning’s proceedings. Please wait for me or the member asking the question to say your name before you come in to speak. Do not feel that you have to answer every single question—if you have nothing to add to what has been said by others, there is no requirement to say anything. I am not trying to dissuade you from speaking but, given that we have five witnesses, it is just a matter of time constraints.? Please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn on your microphone before you start speaking.??
For witnesses who are online, if you want to answer a question, please indicate that with an R in the chat box in Zoom and the clerking staff will make sure that I am aware of that and can give you the opportunity to come in. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible—I note that I include myself in that.
Our first theme is the membership of the proposed SEIAC. I will open the questions. Does the bill give SEIAC the right balance of scientific expertise and other interests among its members? I will go to our online witnesses in the first instance because the default is usually to go to the people in the room. I will go to Mike Corbett first.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Before we move on, I have a question that I asked the previous panel because it came up during last week’s evidence. There was a suggestion that it would be important to have a strong link with occupational health in order to be able to collect data, identify trends at an early stage and do proactive work. No one on the previous panel particularly jumped at that suggestion. We heard last week that there would be a greater role for occupational health. Would anyone here commend that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Thank you. Tony Higgins, do you want to come in?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Paul O’Kane, do you have any more questions?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
We are almost there. I hope that Mike Corbett, who made the comment about teachers’ pay, will not mind me saying that the money for that was found and it did not come from anywhere else. I moved to this committee from the Education, Children and Young People Committee, and I know that the £26 million to pay for the teachers’ pay award in the current financial year came specifically from the colleges budget—the colleges lost £26 million in the current financial year.
I merely leave that sitting there—I do not want to open up a wider debate, but I think that that is relevant to Mr Mason’s line of questioning and to Linda Somerville’s points in relation to how we use wider taxation powers not just in this place but at a UK level, because there are Barnett consequentials coming here.
I absolutely get that the witnesses today have tried to articulate passionately and clearly what the right thing to do is in relation to the safety of workers across Scotland. It is for the politicians to look in a bit more detail at how that could be financed.
I thank you all for your important evidence this morning. That is the end of the evidence session, and I suspend the meeting briefly while we prepare for the next panel of witnesses.
10:02 Meeting suspended.10:04 On resuming—
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Yes.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Bob Doris
Tony Higgins, you were cautious when you came in earlier. You talked about a period of 10 to 20 years. This is an appropriate time to bring yourself in.
