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 839 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
You are saying they are available in England but we do not have them in Scotland. Professor Napier, do you want to come in on that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
I have one final question. Rachel O’Neill, you said that colleges could do more if there were a bit of a plan but that there are only two colleges in the whole of Scotland that are doing quite well with regard to the levels of BSL on offer. However, even if there is a plan, how can they train more teachers if they do not have any more funding?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
Still on the rural theme, I will touch upon what Avril Hepner said about Aberdeen as well as your experience, Alana, in terms of Deaf Links, which covers not only Dundee but Angus and Perth and Kinross.
The 2022 census shows that, in local authorities in the north of Scotland and the Highlands and Islands, the number of BSL users is slightly higher than the Scotland average. You have talked about the challenges of not having sufficient teachers or sufficient trainers, but is that the main challenge that you find in your area in the north-east?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
It is interesting that you say that, because in our notes, it says that in Aberdeenshire, there are only interpreters—there are no trainers. If we look outside the central belt, what you are saying is that there is an issue with interpreters. Another huge issue is that there are no trainers and no training programme. You talk about people having their life chances reduced; for people in Aberdeenshire, their life chances are definitely reduced.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
If representatives of colleges were here now, they would say that colleges are on their knees, so—
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
Thank you. I especially thank you, Lucy. I realise that giving that evidence in front of a committee was probably difficult, but it is a very important topic.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
My next question is for Lucy as well. One in four women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Do you believe that we should monitor and measure that much better than we do right now?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
British Sign Language Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Tess White
You have raised the issue of central versus local government. The fact is that chief executives will say, “We’ve had our funding squeezed”, so would you also say to the Scottish Government, “Given that the local councils have had their funding squeezed, could you earmark some money for training programmes, mapping interpreters and so on?” What two or three things would dramatically improve the situation in the rural areas? We have talked about transport, training and more teachers—is there anything else? Can you tell us two or three things that we really need to do, so that it is not woolly? Perhaps Avril Hepner could answer that question after Alana Harper does.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Civil Legal Aid Inquiry
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Tess White
You did not really answer the question, which was this: are you, personally, concerned about the issue?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Civil Legal Aid Inquiry
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Tess White
My second question is about the pool of solicitors. There seems to be a systemic problem in that there are not enough solicitors to do the work. In the nine years that you have been chief executive of SLAB, have you sat down with the Law Society to discuss that systemic issue?
