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 2904 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Baseline Health Protection Measures
Meeting date: 18 November 2021
John Mason
That is very helpful.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statements and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 November 2021
John Mason
Thirdly, we heard evidence earlier from Professor Petersen that we could put more reliance on the lateral flow tests than we have been doing. What is your thinking on that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Baseline Health Protection Measures
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
John Mason
Could we also have the dental angle?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Baseline Health Protection Measures
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
John Mason
Thank you, convener. I am disappointed that some members have had considerably longer to ask questions than some of the rest of us. Mr Whittle has just had 22 minutes, but Jim Fairlie and I now have to share nine minutes between us.
I am also a member of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, which has been discussing preventative spending for some time. That work has been going on for some years, and this is the 10th anniversary of the Christie commission. The point has already been made this morning, especially by Dr Buist, that there has perhaps been a concentration on hospital buildings rather than on those for the primary care sector, where all three witnesses work. Do you have any suggestions on how we take that forward? Assuming that there will be no extra money in total, should we trim money off hospital budgets and put more into primary care? That question goes first to Dr Buist.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Baseline Health Protection Measures
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
John Mason
I will leave it at that, convener.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Baseline Health Protection Measures
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
John Mason
Given the time, I will ask just one more question, which is on vaccination passports. For staff in certain settings—those working for certain care home companies, I believe—vaccination is being made compulsory. Is that the right way to go?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
John Mason
We have covered quite a lot of areas already. I want to pick up on the topic of older and younger workers, which we have heard a few comments on. Professor Simms talked about older workers struggling to find work. Paul Hunter talked about soft skills, including critical thinking, which I imagine quite a lot of older people would have, and agility, which maybe we think of younger people as having. We have also had input from organisations. Highlands and Islands Enterprise talked about competition for young people, and UK Hospitality talked about Scotland just not having enough workers.
I wonder whether we—that is, the public sector and the Government—can do more to help older workers. Have we put too much emphasis on younger workers in the past?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
John Mason
Thank you, convener. I have nothing to declare either.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
John Mason
I was concentrating on age, but you have brought in the issue of gender, which I find interesting. Is that an issue that has to be sorted at school? Is that the stage at which intervention would ensure that we get more girls into information technology?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
John Mason
Thank you.
Katy Heidenreich, I imagine that your sector keeps training its workers even when they are older. Am I correct? Are businesses afraid of losing their workers as a result of that training, or is that just part of the industry?
