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 2001 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Yes. I have some other questions.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
This gets to the heart of human rights, and it is ultimately about the human rights of trans people. Of course, trans people’s rights are human rights, not because they are trans but because they are human. We have heard in a lot of the evidence sessions about the importance of the human rights of everyone who is involved.
I am deeply disappointed by the public discourse around this particular debate, in which trans people have seen their rights being debated on opening the papers or watching the news; of course, women have also experienced that debate about rights, but human rights are inalienable, not debateable. I believe that a lot of that discourse is to do with the vacuum that was left by the Government between 2017 and 2019 and I am disappointed by that. What can the Government do to sort out this mess?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you, cabinet secretary. Could you set out what changes you have made and what equalities analysis you have done since the equality impact assessment in 2017 to 2019? We have heard concerns that there have not been many changes.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
In the bill, it is set out that there will be regulations on the form and on the information that the registrar general will be able to collect. You have already touched on that—and I will come back to the issue of young people in a moment, if the convener allows it—but would you be prepared to publish the regulations for the registrar general ahead of the bill being finished at stage 2?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. My final question on this topic is about the prison service. We have briefly spoken about that and, notwithstanding the comments on the numbers involved, which are small, is it your view that, following the review of Scottish Prison Service guidance, a gender recognition certificate would not be considered as a kind of passport as it has been in other areas of the UK, and that the approach would remain risk based, both to the trans person and to the other people who are living in prison at the time? Would a risk-based approach still take precedence over the relevance of a GRC?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I am concerned that the instruments will increase the cost of accessing justice by 2 per cent in July and a further 2 per cent next April, at a time when disabled people are facing extreme cost of living increases. Some evidence that was submitted to the consultation on the increases highlighted that the exemptions and disregards for some income, including for disabled people, are not sufficient to ensure access to justice and protect against poverty. Therefore, I am concerned about the increases and note the concerns of organisations including Inclusion Scotland and Citizens Advice Scotland.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Convener, I have some questions in other areas.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
My further question around the registrar general touches on the issue of age. The registrar general and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland both spoke of the need for support. The registrar general, I think, said that there had been conversations with the cabinet secretary on the sort of support and on the organisations that would provide it to people, so that they could understand the effect of the gender recognition certificate. Cabinet secretary, can you say what those conversations have been and who you think those organisations might be? You mentioned that it could cost approximately £350,000 to set up the system, with on-going costs of £150,000. For some support, that could be considered quite a small amount. Will you set out the detail on that and on the role that young people will have in developing support and guidance?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I appreciate that answer, cabinet secretary, and I understand what implications the bill might or might not have for health services. However, we have heard in a number of evidence sessions about the experience of trans people in the round, and I thought that it would be helpful if we put that question to you today. Indeed, it would be remiss of us if we did not do so.
The bill contains a number of reporting mechanisms, and I note that those outlined for the registrar general for Scotland are considerably more restricted than they are for bodies elsewhere in the UK. I am thinking, for example, of the Ministry of Justice. Are you open to looking at further reporting mechanisms and collection of data on people’s date of birth, birth status and so on to get a clearer picture of people across Scotland, including on the number of trans people?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Yes, that would be helpful. Thank you.
The children’s commissioner spoke about the presumption in the children’s bill that children and young people have capacity to share their views with the court. Would something similar be helpful in this bill?
