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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
Does everybody agree to the recommendations?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
I will bring in Sophie Bridger, first.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
Do other witnesses have any comments?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
Our final new petition is PE2124, which was lodged by Eliza Wiper, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to change the law so that it no longer considers private and workplace pensions to be part of matrimonial property.
The Scottish Parliament information centre briefing explains that pension benefits that are built up during the period of the marriage or civil partnership are considered matrimonial or partnership property. The briefing also notes that a key principle of financial provision on divorce is that the net value of a couple’s matrimonial or partnership property must be shared fairly between them. Fair sharing is usually equal sharing unless special circumstances apply.
The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that it does not support the aims of the petition. In response to the petitioner’s view that no contribution is made by the partner to the pension, the Scottish Government highlights an indirect contribution made, such as one spouse leaving or reducing paid work to care for children or other family members.
The petitioner’s written submission shares her view that staying at home to look after children is the choice of that individual and highlights the Scottish Government’s proposed early years childcare funding. The petitioner is also keen to receive more data on the issues that are raised in the petition.
Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
That concludes the public part of our meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Wednesday 19 February. I hope that our convener will be well enough to convene it.
11:44 Meeting continued in private until 12:07.Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
On that point, do you feel that there is an awareness of less-common stroke symptoms among clinical staff?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
Thank you. If there are no other contributions, I thank you for your evidence and suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.
10:26 Meeting suspended.10:27 On resuming—
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
If we were to have a public awareness campaign that included more symptoms, can you highlight what risks you feel that there would be?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2025.
Our first item of business is to make a decision on whether to take in private agenda items 4 and 5, which are on consideration of evidence that we are about to hear and our work programme. Are members content to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
David Torrance
The first new petition is PE2121, which was lodged by Carolyn Philip, who I believe is with us in the public gallery. Welcome. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to run a campaign targeted at companies to raise awareness of the harms that are caused by roadside litter and the penalties that could be brought against responsible parties. We are joined for consideration of the petition by our colleague, Rachael Hamilton MSP—welcome, Rachael.
Keep Scotland Beautiful reports that 50 tonnes of litter are abandoned on Scotland’s roadsides each month. The charity’s annual Scottish litter survey of 2024 set out that 88 per cent of respondents viewed roadside litter as a problem in Scotland.
The Scottish Government’s response highlights the 2023 national litter and fly-tipping strategy and year 1 action plan. The response states that that work recognises the importance of prevention through education and communication and of effective approaches to enforcement. On enforcement, section 18 of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024, when commenced, will enable the issuing of civil penalties for littering from a vehicle.
The response informs us that the national litter and fly-tipping strategy delivery group has established a communications sub-group that will explore the best ways to deliver effective communication messages on litter and fly-tipping. Proposals put forward in the petition will be shared with the sub-group so that it can consider them as part of its on-going work to look at improving communications at the national level. However, the Scottish Government has indicated that direct mailing to local businesses and roadside signage would be a matter for local authorities or Transport Scotland.
The petitioner’s response states that, although her group commends the amount of work that has been done in producing the action plan, she does not agree that the fundamental steps have been taken to address the point that is made in the petition. She points out that the action plan does not mention making companies responsible for securing loose items on open-back lorries. She states that large sums of money are spent each year to clean up litter and suggests that the money would be better spent on applying a workable and enforceable way of reducing litter in the first place.
Before I invite comments from the committee, I ask Rachael Hamilton whether she would like to contribute.
