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 2594 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
John Mason
Is that because we in the UK are too fanatical about privacy?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
John Mason
Okay. So far, we have mainly mentioned connectivity within the UK picture, but what about the international scene? How have other countries been doing with genome sequencing, and how are they planning to go forward? We tend to think of America as the leader on such matters. Where does it stand in all of this? What about the rest of Europe?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
John Mason
The universities tend to have good relationships with others around the world. I wonder whether either Dr Templeton or Professor Gunson has experience of working internationally on this issue.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
John Mason
How would developing countries cope? They were often slow to get vaccines. Would some of them have struggled in that area?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
John Mason
Thank you—that is helpful. I am sure that the Government is watching this session, but we can perhaps also raise some of those points with it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
John Mason
Thank you for the opportunity to be here in place of Colin Beattie. It is a privilege.
Energy has been mentioned a few times and I will spend a little bit more time on that. The witnesses and others have made the point that the energy prices, which are largely outwith the UK’s control, have gone up dramatically. That has fuelled inflation and that is damaging the economy. I wonder, and some of the public wonder, whether we are doing energy the best way that we can. As I understand it, Scotland produces five times as much gas as it uses. We are also producing a lot of renewable electricity, which is meant to be cheaper—certainly in the long run—but people are not seeing the benefit of that. Is it something inevitable that we have to accept or could we do energy differently to support the economy better?
I will start with Susan Murray.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
John Mason
My apologies. I realise that I am not speaking to energy experts. Neither am I an energy expert, of course.
Do the other witnesses want to comment on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
John Mason
I come to Emma Congreve. Professor Chadha touched on types of support, and that is where I will go next. What kind of support should the UK Government, or potentially the Scottish Government, give, particularly to businesses? I am getting £400, but I am ridiculously well paid, so it seems crazy for me to get that when other people are really struggling. Can you comment on the bigger picture and the local picture?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
John Mason
Thank you for your answer and for your suggestion that I give my £400 away—my colleagues are all pointing at me.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
John Mason
I will push you a little further on that issue, especially where businesses are concerned. Professor Chadha made the point that we want people to become more efficient—that is true of businesses as well—and not use energy that they do not need to use, although some do need to use a lot of energy for a variety of reasons. Do you have any thoughts about how we could target businesses to get that balance right?
