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 1182 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Willie Rennie
To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s position is regarding the use of facial recognition technology in schools. (S6F-00388)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Willie Rennie
I am not sure that the minister’s increasingly aggressive language towards the RMT will resolve the issue. Could he answer Mr Bibby’s question? Was there a counter offer, and was it accepted or rejected by the minister?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Willie Rennie
What does the Deputy First Minister have to say to many of my constituents who continue to experience, as they have done for some time, issues with incomplete vaccine records, which make it incredibly difficult for them to get access to the vaccine passport? Is that not just another example of the failed vaccine passport system? It is about time that he ditched it.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Education (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Report)
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Willie Rennie
The cabinet secretary has been left to clean up John Swinney’s blunder over national testing. Having scrapped the national survey just a few years ago, the Government, this time with its tail between its legs, is now bringing it back. Why on earth is the cabinet secretary still clinging on to a national collection of local testing data, even though that leads to damaging school league tables?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage
Meeting date: 26 October 2021
Willie Rennie
After years and years of delay, during which carbon capture was on, then off, then on again, the biggest loser has been the planet. I support the Scottish Government’s call for the decision to be reversed, but does the minister agree that what is most important is that the project actually happens this time?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 26 October 2021
Willie Rennie
It is important that we all stand up against spiking. On Wednesday, I will address a protest at the University of St Andrews, and I want to report to the protesters that the Scottish Parliament is taking action on spiking. A successful testing-strip promotion scheme is already in place in Lincolnshire that provides free test strips for all venues. Would the Scottish Government be prepared to roll out a similar scheme in Scotland, as well as fund it?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Retail Sector
Meeting date: 26 October 2021
Willie Rennie
If the Scotland Loves Local gift card is to have a meaningful economic impact on retail, it needs to operate at scale; otherwise, it will just be tokenistic. How many businesses have made bulk purchases of the card for their employees, and how many cards has the Government bought for its employees?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 October 2021
Willie Rennie
National assessments were originally introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Government, before they were scrapped by the Liberal Democrat-Labour Government here, because they resulted in crude league tables. The recent OECD report criticised the use of the Scottish Government’s assessments for national monitoring purposes, and now we have crude league tables once again. Why is the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills more persuaded by the logic of Margaret Thatcher than that of the OECD?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Carer’s Allowance Supplement (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 7 October 2021
Willie Rennie
If they had not done so before, the value of and the need for unpaid carers have shone brightly throughout the pandemic. The bill is our commitment that recognises their commitment. It does not cover every carer—it falls far short of doing that—but those it does cover will receive an essential supplement to their income. It is an essential supplement, but we should never kid ourselves that it will be enough for most. We know the financial struggles that carers endure week in, week out, which is why we must return to the issue when we consider shaping the new benefit—Scottish carers assistance.
I had hoped that the Government would end the uncertainty about next year, at least by committing to the supplement for next year. However, unpaid carers now face the prospect of a cut next year, just like the universal credit cut, because the trauma of the pandemic has not ended. In fact, the costs continue to rise for carers just as they do for everyone else.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 October 2021
Willie Rennie
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it plans to implement the recommendations made by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on Scottish national standardised assessments in its report, “Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: Into the Future”. (S6O-00252)
