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 3346 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
Mr McQueen, when you were speaking earlier, I got the impression that you were describing a court system that is over capacity. Is that accurate?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
I thought that, when you were talking about the High Court and the sheriff courts, you said that the number of cases was higher than expected.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
How have you done that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
Is that the maximum?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
I have to say, Mr Rennick, that you have blamed uncertainties for not producing that delivery plan, but there are always uncertainties.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
If I may say so, that is a rather pathetic excuse. When will we see the delivery plan that the Auditor General has described as
“critical for ensuring work continues to modernise the criminal justice system”?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
According to the Auditor General, the plan was due in the summer of this year. You still have not told me when we will see it. When will we see it?
Meeting of the Parliament
Football
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
I should not need to point out to Stuart McMillan that I am a Scotland fan. I think that he knows that I was born in Aberdeen, so I was rooting for Scotland.
Meeting of the Parliament
Football
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
It has been a largely positive debate. It did not quite start off that way, but I invite the minister to make her closing remarks, when she responds, wholly and 100 per cent positive, in order to reflect the nature of the debate that we have had. That is what one would expect, given the subject.
Everyone who has spoken is a fan of football. Some of us will have played football at some point in our lives, to varying standards—not very high, in my case. I suspect that Stephen Kerr has never pulled on a pair of boots.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Graham Simpson
The cost of building the Glen Sannox and the Glen Rosa is an on-going scandal. We do not know when they will be finished, what the final bill will be and what has happened to all the money. The Auditor General says he needs extra powers in order to find out what has happened to £128 million of money that was spent by Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd—FMEL. Will the First Minister grant those powers?
