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 1131 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
Is that not when HMP Glasgow is supposed to be up and running?
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
All of us can get a prescription online quickly or a repeat prescription with a phone call. Is there not some provision that could be made for released offenders to do that as well? As you say, the issue is critical, otherwise people might be left high and dry after five days. We do not have to suffer, as we can get a repeat prescription by going online or phoning, so why would they be excluded from doing that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
Good morning. I first have a couple of questions for Mr Logue. You gave us good news about the success of the pilots that you described and said that they have helped a lot. If I understand correctly, you said that many of the things that have happened did not require extra funding and seem to be operational matters that have been successful. I therefore struggle to understand why they would be compromised in the sense that you mentioned. I am sorry if that is naive, but I want you to clarify that.
In your earlier statement, you said that things still need to improve, and you have probably covered that in what you said to my colleague Russell Findlay. You said that one of the issues is that your practitioners would not be trauma informed. I am struggling to understand why that would be the case if your current staff have had trauma training. Were you talking about training or incoming staff? Could you please clarify that, too?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
Does that cost more?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
It sounds as if you know where you want to go and what you want to do. Is it fair to say that your budgetary concerns are about staff? I know that that is an overview.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
At face value, the Wise Group is saying that things have got better. The matter does not seem to be as much of a problem as it was when the committee visited the group’s offices in May. I am not sure where we can go from here.
Throughcare is another issue. I do not have anything constructive to say about that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
Will the roll-out of the new custody units go ahead as planned?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
I took entirely the wrong meaning from your use of the word, “rationalisation”. I apologise for that. As far as Barlinnie and future planning goes, would that be put on ice or would HMP Glasgow still go ahead?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
It is a long-term process.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Rona Mackay
Good morning. I want to ask about the impact on capital spending in the prison estate and how that could be impacted by a potential shortfall in funding. I was quite alarmed to see in your submission that considering immediate rationalisation of the women’s estate could be one of the measures that you must consider—I am not saying that you said that you would do that. Can you expand on that and also say what impact it would have on the replacement for Barlinnie and so on?
