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 750 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
I wonder whether we could add to the content of the letter to the Government as described by Mr Torrance a request that the Government comment specifically on the statistic to which the convener alluded, which shows that access to a defibrillator increases substantially a person’s chances of survival. In addition, I might have missed this in the papers—there is a lot of data in the British Heart Foundation’s submission—but I wonder whether it is possible to identify how many people’s lives have been saved as a result of the increased protect and survive capability that defibrillators provide. Rather than having a theoretical statistical percentage, it would be very interesting to find out how many people’s lives have been saved as a result of defibrillators. I think that that would be useful data to access—if, of course, the British Heart Foundation has it. We can ascertain whether it does by asking it that question.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
I am just trying to get to the root of your views and also to what you think should happen, so that we can consider matters in the light of that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
Thank you, convener, and good morning to our witnesses. Thank you for appearing. As you have alluded to, the committee was keen to give you the opportunity and to hear what you have to say.
You might have already answered my question, Dr Blackburn, but what is the aim of the petition? What would you like to see happening? You have made your views clear, and I am grateful for that, but I am curious to know what you would like to happen and what in particular you would like to see changed.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
I am obviously not going to mention any particular cases, but there may be instances of a rape suspect self-identifying as a trans woman. Many people—including me, although this is my personal view—might think that that person is frankly at it and is a bad actor. Given that that is happening in—happily—a very few instances, what is your view about how the gender identity of the suspects in those cases should be recorded? It is presumably your view that those are men and should be recorded as male. Is that it?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
I have listened to what you said and I am grateful for the explanation that you have given. Is your concern not so much about the precise or dry technical rules about how sex should be recorded but about the fact that there have, in recent times, been cases of men carrying out rape and self-identifying as women so that, instead of recognising them as men, the state takes a wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed approach and cannot spit out that those people are, in fact, men? Is that really your concern? Rather than the issue of the recording of statistics, is this not more about an ethical or political view that you have? We have to consider where we go and what we do with the petition, if anything.
I do not mean in any way to criticise the view that you take, which I probably share, if I have understood the views that you have expressed this morning, but it seems to me that what you really want is for society to take the very clear approach that a male rapist is a male rapist, that rapists are men and that that is that, and that men who—as you see it—pretend to be women are at it. If that is your view, is that not more a matter of politics than of the recording of statistics? Many members of the public would say that it is pretty obvious that all rapists are men and that we all know that already, and that, if they identify as women, that is a matter of self-identification but does not change their biological sex.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
I guess that the background to that view is the feeling that some individuals might seek to be housed in female prisons. In that sense, the motive for professing female gender is one that most people would regard as bogus. That said, I take the distinction that has been made.
I have just one more question for the witnesses, which is this: what would you like to happen next? You have already said that ethical leadership is what you require from the Government, the police, those who record statistics and so on, but are there any more specific things that you would like to be done in response to your petition?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
And you would like us to find that out.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
Yes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
Ethical leadership. My understanding is that, at the moment, Police Scotland has the primary responsibility for accurately recording the sex of suspects. What is your view about that? Are you happy with that? Is it your view that you are happy with that but that the police do not carry it out in a way that you regard as displaying that ethical leadership?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Fergus Ewing
So your concern is not so much who is legally responsible for recording the sex of suspects but the fact that there is an abnegation of responsibility on the part of the Scottish Government. Instead of giving very clear instructions, it gives guidance that is vague—perhaps for political considerations.
