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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 864 contributions
|
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 June 2021
Alasdair Allan
I have nothing in particular to report, but I refer people to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Legacy Papers
Meeting date: 23 June 2021
Alasdair Allan
I, too, congratulate both the convener and the new deputy convener.
Patrick Harvie, in particular, covered some of the constitutional issues. We are obviously going to have to look at a referendum bill. On the point that he made about intergovernmental relations, I have served on—or endured being on—a joint ministerial committee, and I think that the committee, regardless of our differing perspectives on the constitution, has to own up to the fact that the joint ministerial committees are not an effective mechanism for conversation between our Governments. We should start to look at what the alternatives might be and see whether we can come to a consensus about that.
We will obviously look at the Brexit legacy and the implications for the devolution settlement, including questions in the wake of Brexit on things such as UK spending in what might in the past have been considered to be devolved areas, and trade deals.
Donald Cameron made the good point that we need to be careful that we do not tread too far into the work of other committees, but a number of things in our remit and in the legacy papers will probably involve our having to find a modus vivendi with other committees. It is difficult to see how we could talk about culture without talking about its place in schools or about Brexit without talking about agriculture. There is a bit of work to be done before we get started on how we can establish good relations with other committees in order to ensure that we can do that work.
International development is another area that I have been involved in. We will scrutinise what the Scottish Government does on that, but it must be seen both in the context of Covid and in the wider context—I am sorry to be political so early on—of a UK Government that seems to be withdrawing from some of its commitments in the area. That has implications for the setting of Scotland’s relatively modest but important international development work. There is also a specific job of work to be done in not just celebrating but looking at our particular relationship with Malawi.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Legacy Papers
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Alasdair Allan
As Liam McArthur mentioned, in our papers, there are obvious topics such as the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—and the replacements for the common agricultural policy, trade deals and so on. It is interesting that the committee has on it three members who live on islands. I apologise if we try to take over from time to time, but I echo what Liam said about the fact that many of the issues that affect islands, and perhaps other parts of the country, are ultimately about depopulation. Therefore, there will be crossover between issues, and possibly some negotiation will have to be done with other committees about exactly where our remit lies.
If we are talking about rural or island economies, an issue that is impossible to avoid is housing. I realise that we are not the housing committee, but it is an example of an area that we cannot avoid straying into, because we will not have an economy in some parts of the country if we do not have anywhere for people to live.
We need to clarify whether we will have opportunities to take a more holistic or cross-cutting look at some of the economic issues that affect islands and other areas that are affected by depopulation, but which might stray into other committees’ remits and, as such, involve inviting them to negotiate remits.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Alasdair Allan
I have no particular interests to declare, but I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
