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 1002 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
I have one more question on local authorities before I move on to the human rights approach. Caroline O’Connor, in your interaction with local authorities, where do you see the gaps or challenges in terms of wider support provision?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Are you cognisant of the criticisms that have been voiced by people such as the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland of the circumstances in which pregnant women, in particular, have found themselves and of the issues around how hotels are managed and supported by Mears? How do you react to that criticism, take it on board and make changes? Much of the evidence that we have heard thus far has suggested that that does not always happen—or, at least, there is a real feeling that it does not always happen.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
We have had a conversation about resource and how such decisions often become very resource driven because of the pressures that local authorities and other agencies face. The evidence that the committee has heard thus far from people such as the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland is that we need to refocus on the issue and look at it through a human rights lens, because there are serious concerns about dignity. John Taylor spoke about dignity and respect in his opening statement, and there is a lack of dignity and respect for people who are seeking such support. In a previous question, I referred to high-profile cases of people being housed inadequately or in inappropriate settings and the challenges that people who are being left destitute face.
Do you think that Mears takes a human rights approach? What more do you think that you could do in your contracts to achieve the dignity and respect that you spoke about?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Obviously, the committee is cognisant of the Illegal Migration Bill and has been looking at its impacts. Caroline O’Connor, it has been suggested that a broader humanitarian strategy that would pull lots of different Scottish Government strategies together might be a better way to respond to that. Do you have a view on that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. The committee recognises that asylum and immigration are reserved matters, but we are particularly interested in the devolved areas, especially the Scottish Government’s work to address many of the issues about which we have already heard this morning and throughout our evidence taking.
Will you share with us what involvement you have had with the Scottish Government’s strategies, particularly the new Scots and ending destitution together strategies?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
I want to follow up the conversation about the legislation and, indeed, on what can be done within devolved legislative competence on those issues. The Scottish Refugee Council has called on the Scottish Government to use its powers under section 9 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015 to look at creating an anti-trafficking protection process, essentially, that would bypass the NRM. To what extent do the witnesses consider that that would be useful in protecting our obligations under article 4 of the EHRC? I will start with Bronagh Andrew to get a sense of whether you want the Government to push that forward.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
I will correct my acronym: for the record, it is ECHR—the European convention on human rights—not EHCR. I do that all the time, so apologies for that.
Thank you, Bronagh—that was helpful. Notwithstanding the challenges that the Illegal Migration Bill presents, what is your sense of engagement with ministers on that? Has work been done to look at a different referral mechanism?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Okay. You mentioned Police Scotland’s interest in protecting the most vulnerable. I will ask about your approach to supporting people. People are held in custody suites or in cells using the powers under immigration legislation. That practice is particularly concerning for people who are saying quite clearly that they are victims of human trafficking. In some cases, they have left a really dangerous situation and are then held in custody.
To what extent do you recognise that that practice is an additional barrier to supporting someone who has been a victim of human trafficking? Do you recognise that the Angiolini review identified that as being an additional barrier? Is there more that we can do to find alternative ways to process people?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Do you think that the ending of the strategy was down to a funding issue, or was it just felt that it would be better to integrate it into other strategies?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 9 May 2023
Paul O'Kane
Louise Long touched on ESOL provision in communities such as Inverclyde. It can be challenging, because people would often rather keep things local and keep everyone in the community, but I know that people might have to travel to Glasgow and other places. What is your ESOL provision like from the community learning and development team or West College Scotland? What would enhance Inverclyde’s provision?
