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 2200 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
What a museum should be is a very broad question, obviously. I like your description of coming at an issue from different directions. I did not feel that that was the case in the Kelvingrove exhibit that was specifically mentioned. I felt that it was a very single-directional sort of narrative, which led people to pretty bad conclusions about themselves, I think. That is the opposite of what you said. You were talking about how the institutions that you are involved in were causing people harm. We do not want the new ways to cause people harm, either.
I have probably taken up enough time.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
So, separate not in the sense of being distinct, but in the sense of being a separate part of something else that brings people through the door?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
Do you want to say a bit more about the importance of nuance in the way that we tell the story?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
Lucy Casot, is that how you see things?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
How did you interpret it?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
What would it look like? Describe the experience.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
Do you understand, however, the concerns that some people, including me, have about the fact that, as a political activist—you have been very honest and said that you are one—you have chosen the museum space as a vehicle to promote your view of the world? That is not an unfair thing to say, is it?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
Absolutely. It is just that, perhaps, the traditional view of a museum, as that of a school, is that you do not go there to be re-educated to a certain way of thinking, but to have your curiosity piqued and your desire for learning enhanced. No?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
That makes a lot of sense.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Stephen Kerr
I completely concur with everything that. you just said. It is important that we see the vileness and evil of slavery in the context of what else was happening and the complexity of that issue. That is a vital aspect of education. I am just expressing the concern, which perhaps other people also have, that we should not use this worthy endeavour as a vehicle for political activism, which I personally would not want to see our museum spaces or our schools being used overtly for. That is another point of view.
I started with the question about nuance because I would not like you to think that because I have those concerns, I am a racist or a fascist. In my view, I am neither.
