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 873 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
Yes.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
That is why I referred to the lower end. There is obviously a cost in recovery, and effort is involved in doing that—
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
That is helpful.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
Yes, but that is a ministerial thing. What I am saying is that it might provide reassurance to some of the parties that have commented on the bill to move that into the bill so that it is in the primary legislation. The question is whether you see any negative aspects to excluding ordinary household goods from these provisions up front.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
I understand that that is easier from a legal or technical point of view. However, with regard to consumer protection, those might be questions that we should be asking: are we allowing people to secure debt against things that they cannot live without?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
Witnesses have touched on a lot of the topics that are of concern to me, and particularly the challenges facing smaller rural colleges. Joanna Campbell’s written submission talks about the impact of flat cash settlements, the pressures of inflation and some of the things that colleges are being asked to do. How will the lack of funding impact on your work over the next few years?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
Thank you, convener—I did not want to cut anyone off.
My other question is about something that came up with the previous panel. In Glasgow, there have been significant mergers of colleges as part of regionalisation. That scale of merger is more challenging—I would say impossible—in other parts of the country, simply because of geography. Is there pressure in the system to look at what I would describe as unsuitable mergers, or significant changes in the structure of colleges, to try to deal with budgetary pressures? Are we at that point? Again, I am happy to put that question to any of the witnesses.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
I was waiting to see whether Angela Cox wanted to say any more—
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
I would kindly ask the First Minister not to seek to politicise my family life, just as I would never seek to do so when it comes to hers.
I have received reports from national health service whistleblowers in Dumfries and Galloway that paramedics attending a call-out in the past week were told, having urgently requested a doctor as required under the Mental Health Act 1983, that there was no on-call doctor available in the region. That comes on top of concerns being raised about unsafe staffing levels at Dumfries and Galloway royal infirmary and allegations of bullying.
First Minister, this is completely unacceptable. My constituents are worried. NHS staff are sounding alarm bells. What steps can the Government take to make sure that our NHS is functioning safely and meeting basic health needs?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Oliver Mundell
To ask the Scottish Government whether it supports property purchases, direct payments to property owners and the use of non-disclosure agreements as a means of removing objections to large-scale wind farm applications. (S6O-01346)
