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 6041 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much for that. Does anyone online want to come in on the perspective of strengths? Does no one have anything to add? No strengths? Gosh!
I am going to weave my next two questions together. We have started to touch on them a little bit. What are your views around the support that you receive from local authorities where you are? Are they good relationships? What are your views on the community council liaison officers and on national support? Is there enough training, grants from the Scottish Government and support from the Improvement Service? What are your thoughts about the Scottish community council website and the knowledge hub?
There are a couple of things there on working with the local authorities and also that national support. We have some people in the room who you will be commenting on but, as we know, all feedback is constructive and it all helps us to develop in a good way.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
I live in Moray and I have had that experience of very early engagement on the next local development plan. It has been tremendous.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
That is a good point.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much. On the questions on working with local authorities and/or reflections on the support that you get at a national level, Donald Stavert wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Brilliant. That is amazing.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
That sounds great. I am interested in that issue, and I have been racking my brains about how to get young people engaged, so there are a couple of things that I would be interested to hear your views on. I am going to open up the discussion as we move to a close, so you do not necessarily have to respond to what I say—there might be other things that you want to add.
One thought that I had was about collaboration with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. People are going through its scheme, and it has a community aspect. Also, I have been wondering about the idea of universal basic income, although I know that that would be a big thing that might involve the rebuilding of the whole of Scotland. We have talked about the amount of time that people have to put in to do this properly. If people had some kind of fundamental financial support, a more diverse group would be able to participate much more in what we need to do, which is helping Scotland plc do its thing and provide for our communities.
Along with that, I have been thinking about how the Improvement Service provides training once people are in a community council, and I wonder whether we need to teach young people at high school about facilitation skills, decision making, proposal making and how to go into situations of tension with people with whom they do not agree—how to move through that process rather than getting stuck in being adversarial. I feel that teenagers should learn those kinds of skills. My sense is that, at the moment, schools still tend to teach just to the job. Of course, it is not totally limited to that but, if we taught to the community—how to be a member of a community and civil society—that would be great for people in their job, but they would also have the underpinnings to be part of the community.
I have been racking my brains about those issues, but maybe you think differently from me, as you are actually involved in those experiences.
Who wants to come in on that briefly? Debra Duke’s hand shot up.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
That point about technical support for planning is critical.
Steve Kerr wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you for pointing that out. Jackie Weaver, I have a question for you. I am interested to hear what you think the strengths are of the system in England, particularly as it compares to Scotland. We could probably be here all day hearing about that, but if you can give us some highlights that would be great.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
We are asking about the barriers and blocks to community councils being able to do things. It becomes absurd if it means that you cannot do your litter picking or, indeed, have your beautiful blooms. After all, I know that Forres in bloom in Moray is an incredible asset to the community. Thank you for throwing that into the conversation.
I see that Debra Duke wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Councils
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Welcome back. We will have a round-table discussion about community councils with our second panel. I extend many thanks to our panel for joining us. We are joined in the room by John Bachtler, chair of Cambuslang community council; Debra Duke, community council liaison officer at Moray Council; Alastair Kennedy, chair of the joint community councils of Moray; Steve Kerr, chair of the Edinburgh Association of Community Councils; Donald Stavert, treasurer of the joint forum of community councils in West Lothian; and Barry Cathie, from the royal burgh of Rutherglen community council.
We are joined online by Shayne McLeod, vice-chair of the association of Shetland community councils; Bill Pitt, chair of New Aberdour, Tyrie and Pennan community council; and Ewart McAuslane, treasurer of Tillicoultry, Coalsnaughton and Devonside community council. I welcome you all.
For those of you who are online, you can let the clerks know that you would like to reply to a question by typing R in the chat function. For those in the room, you do not need to operate your microphone; that will be done for you by our broadcasting team.
I will begin our conversation by inviting you all to briefly introduce yourselves. I will start. I am Ariane Burgess, MSP for the Highlands and Islands.
