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 874 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 June 2021
Jenni Minto
I have no relevant interests to declare, but I refer people to my entry in the register of members’ interests, particularly the entry in the voluntary section that says that I am a trustee of a museum.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Legacy Papers
Meeting date: 23 June 2021
Jenni Minto
I congratulate Clare Adamson on her convenership and Donald Cameron on becoming deputy convener.
I am a new MSP, so I am new to the committee structures, but I would like to reflect what Patrick Harvie said: this is probably the most exciting committee and its remit is hugely wide ranging. The MSPs on the committee all bring different experiences, whether from within the Parliament or from outwith it, which is going to add to the work that we can do.
I will not repeat what others have said, but our leaving the EU and how we move forward from that will clearly be a big part of our work. As Patrick Harvie said, that will include reflecting on the relationships that we have across Parliaments—not just with Westminster, but with the European Parliament and the other devolved nations. That is really important given that the Scottish Government has made a commitment to keep pace with EU law.
Like other members, I wonder how we can best work with other committees. As well as having strong relationships across Parliaments, we need to have them across the committees in our Parliament.
My background is mixed, but I have experience of working in broadcasting and the arts. As others have mentioned, those industries and the creativity of people who work in them have been badly impacted by Covid. Not only do we have to worry about the effect that it has had in the cities, we have to think about the impact that it has had in rural areas—on their festivals and art shows, for example—as well as on our indigenous languages.
On broadcasting, Patrick Harvie mentioned the letter about the structures within BBC Scotland and whether further work needs to be done on the commissioning of output and the various channels that we have. That is interesting.
I will finish there, but I am very excited to be part of the committee and look forward to working with experts from across the various fields, learning more about them and helping to shape our future.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Jenni Minto
Like Liam, I live on an island. Other than that, I have no relevant interests to declare, but I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Legacy Papers
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Jenni Minto
Thank you, Finlay, and congratulations on becoming convener. I also congratulate Liam McArthur. I look forward to working with everyone on the committee and the fantastic experts that the Parliament provides us with. I think that RAINE is probably the most appropriate title for the committee because, without rain, we would not have the wonderful green and blue Scotland that we have.
As everyone has said, this is a fantastic committee with a wide remit. As you know, I represent Argyll and Bute and, as I was reading the legacy papers, I felt that Argyll and Bute ticks many of the boxes, as does the rest of rural Scotland.
I will not repeat what everybody else has said but, like Alasdair Allan, I live on an island, and I absolutely understand the issues regarding housing, depopulation, ferries and connectivity. The situation is the same in rural, remote Argyll and Bute and in rural, remote Scotland generally.
We can build on the fantastic work that has already been done. Members have talked a bit about food and the Scottish brand that is food. Wonderful research has been done on the subject, and we are talking about top products. Could we perhaps widen that fantastic research to cover other rural industries, such as fabric, and use it in relation to tourism?
Ariane Burgess talked about communities, which is the one thing that I wrote down. We absolutely have to recognise the importance of our rural communities, and the input of farmers, fishermen, crofters and the aquaculture industry. However, we have to get the right balance between the environment and those organisations.
I also cannot not mention the issue of land reform, on which the members of the committee will have to work together. As Ariane said, with regard to the issue of people and the land, we are in it together, so we need to get through it together.
We have a huge remit, which is exciting, and there is loads of work to do. I am very pleased to be part of it.
Finally, one of the points that I picked up from the two legacy reports is about how we gather the evidence and people’s lived experience. We all have lived experience, but we need to get out into our communities to ensure that we are gathering information from people’s lived experience and what they know about their communities, as widely as we can.
