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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2004 contributions
|
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Emma Harper
We have had some interesting evidence sessions with people who assume that the national care service will do things such as taking away local authorities’ assets. Electric vehicles, for example, were mentioned way back at the beginning of the evidence taking. It might help us if you tell us what the national care service is and is not. The issue of transfer of staff and assets that belong to local authorities, for instance, has been brought up. The point about electric cars was interesting to me because I had asked a question about it. How can we dispel some of the myths that have already been created about the national care service?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Emma Harper
How will the Government ensure that, as part of the co-design process, national accountability allows for local implementation and flexibility? There is a big difference between developing care to be delivered in the city of Glasgow and doing it for rural Dumfries and Galloway, for instance. I assume that co-design will be on-going rather than having an end point for design of the whole service.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Emma Harper
How will we monitor and evaluate the implementation and success—assuming that it is a success—of this framework bill?
Meeting of the Parliament
Year of Disabled Workers 2022
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Emma Harper
[Inaudible.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Year of Disabled Workers 2022
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Emma Harper
My absolute apologies, Presiding Officer.
I just wanted to highlight that the Usual Place is in Dumfries, and I have been there on several occasions. Does Carol Mochan agree that we should encourage people to visit it?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Emma Harper
The STPR2 makes commitments to realign the roads around Springholm and Crocketford and to realign the Cuckoo Bridge roundabout. It is a huge issue for us in the south-west of Scotland, and those are welcome commitments, but I press the cabinet secretary on whether it is likely that the Scottish Government’s budget will include funding for work on those recommendations to be carried out in the coming financial year. When can we see shovels in the ground?
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
Ah dinnae think that Ah am lettin anybody doon, actually. I am coming to the issues that we want to address. I think that it is very clear that there are actions that could be taken.
In the SPICe briefing that I received, options were available. There are various funding sources. The Scottish Land Commission even has its “handy table” of funding sources on its website, including for public sector bodies. In summary, local authorities can issue to a property owner, lessee or occupier a wasteland notice that requires them to take specific actions to improve the condition of their building or land. If that responsible person refuses, the local authority can carry out the work itself and claim back the cost from the owner under the Town and Country (Planning) (Scotland) Act 1997.
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
Would the member possibly take a wee intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
Thank you—I really appreciate the member taking an intervention.
We agree that the George hotel is a total eyesore, and it is fabulous that we are highlighting that in a debate in the chamber. Nonetheless, would Finlay Carson agree that action has finally been started to address that building and to have the community decide what it wants to do wi it?
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
The Treasure Cave building on English Street, which Colin Smyth mentioned, was the only one in relation to which I received a response from the owner. From that, we were able to engage with and seek support from the local authority so that it could proceed with the demolition of the building. Getting engagement from the owner of that site was an interesting challenge, but something has now been done.
