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 2150 contributions
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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
Health Inequalities (Report)
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
The member is still trying to intervene from a sedentary position. The bottom line is that we dinnae have control of the budget. We need the finance to deliver what we need in order to tackle poverty and address health inequalities.
The committee’s report shows that successive UK Conservative Governments, particularly in the 1980s and from 2010 onwards, insisted on austerity agendas and slashed welfare payments and public services. It is important to state that austerity is
“difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure.”
It is caused by policy choices.
Meeting of the Parliament
Health Inequalities (Report)
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
I have only five minutes.
The report reflects that the austerity agenda has caused continued and immense damage to the health of the poorest and most vulnerable. Austerity has been an economic failure and a health failure. During our inquiry, we heard how experts from the Glasgow Centre of Population Health showed that nearly 20,000 excess deaths in Scotland were likely to have been caused by UK Government economic policy. Tory austerity policies have likely caused more deaths in Scotland than Covid-19. [Interruption.]
Here is the evidence that members might want tae listen tae. Dr David Walsh from the Glasgow Centre of Population Health said:
“we must remember that these are more than just statistics: they represent hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been cut short, and hundreds of thousands of families who have had to deal with the grief and aftermath of those deaths.”
Meeting of the Parliament
Health Inequalities (Report)
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
I will be happy to give way, as there is a lot of interest in the subject, if there is time, because I have a lot to cover.
Meeting of the Parliament
Transforming Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Sites
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Emma Harper
Will the member take an intervention?
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?
