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 1184 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Boards recognise that you see the difficulties, but they say that there does not always appear to be urgency about decision making on how to resolve difficulties.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
I think—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
It is Ayrshire.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Are you confident that you have a plan, with urgency, that will help boards even further than the provision of funding does?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Of course; I will come back to it. Thank you, cabinet secretary.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Not at all. It is just that he was obviously part of the input into the NHS so far.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
My interest is in knowing whether you are going to change direction in terms of making some of those things actually happen.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Constitution
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Absolutely not, thank you.
The Government is looking to consider hypotheticals rather than the wolf at the door. The debate is clearly and blatantly an attempt to play to the crowd because the First Minister is on the ropes in his own party and voters are turning away from the Government. Let us not pretend otherwise.
On the notion of a constitution, although I have no issue with a clearer statement of rights or with protecting such important ones as the right to strike, there are plenty of positive steps that the Government could take right now simply through its own actions. We can give people more power in their workplaces and communities with the powers that are available to us currently, so why is that not being pursued? The Government does not need another mandate to implement such measures.
Jamie Hepburn and Angus Robertson are quick to tell us that they have a mandate to deliver a referendum on independence, but they are equally quick to forget the commitments to abolish council tax or reduce primary class sizes. Who can forget, as we have heard before, the treatment time guarantee? Only the SNP Government can do that.
The SNP’s talk of a mandate suits it only when it comes to independence, not when it comes to delivering on the real priorities of the Scottish people. In short, the public want the Government to deliver on what it has already secured votes for before it starts to construct the next promise that it will break.
I do not think that that is too much to ask. All that it takes is accepting the obvious reality that the Government should appreciate what the communities of Scotland want. They are not looking for independence and, certainly, at the moment, none of them is looking for another referendum. That is the hard political reality that faces the Government. A mature Government would consider accepting that point. It is not the time to discuss this paper.
16:08Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Constitution
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Usually, I would welcome the contents of a debate at the start of my remarks, but it is worrying and frustrating in equal measure that, yet again, we find ourselves debating the SNP’s confusing and incoherent plans for a referendum. Those plans are, by the admission of independence supporters, at best unclear.
It often seems that, when scrutiny of the Government’s performance on issues such as the deposit return scheme—
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Constitution
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Carol Mochan
Not at the moment, thank you.
When scrutiny on issues such as the DRS, the NHS or the Government’s general inertia becomes too prevalent, we can guarantee that the next item on the agenda will be independence. Here we go again.
For many members of the public, a debate such as this afternoon’s looks like navel gazing during a continuing cost of living crisis and an increasingly unstable geopolitical situation. It is verging on fantasy that the Government considers discussion about a written constitution to be a priority during these difficult times. I implore the Government to get its act together and work on things that are important to the communities in Scotland.
