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 3461 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
A9 Dualling Project
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Welcome back. I should have concluded the previous evidence session by asking members whether they agree to reflect on that evidence and come to a determination on how we might want to proceed at a subsequent meeting. Do we agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Are you? You can write to yourself on that basis and save the clerks the trouble. [Laughter.] Nonetheless, we will probably put down something more formal by way of communication. The Government has set an ambition of 20 days for the time that it takes to reply to letters. To borrow Mr Neil’s expression, there must be a metric that we can call on to see whether that is happening. We might ask the Scottish Government whether it is able to confirm the percentage of letters that were replied to within 20 days. Are we agreed on that basket of actions?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
There is, it seems to me, a slight contradiction in ASH’s position. ASH is suggesting that e-cigarettes be made available on prescription only to people who wish to use them as an aid to smoking cessation, but if that were to come about, it could, indirectly, encourage young people to start smoking in the first instance in order to get access to vaping, instead of vaping being an alternative to smoking in the first place. The proposal could almost be counterproductive.
I am familiar with the introduction of vaping at an earlier stage in public life and the feeling that it was very much one of the tools that might be available to help with smoking cessation. Clearly, though, vaping has grown exponentially since then, but I do not think that we should be judgmental about that in itself. We should want to understand what evidence, including any emerging evidence, there might be of material harm, and SPICe might be able to identify where such research is being carried out. I think that that would be helpful.
Do members agree with that approach?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
We might even commend to the Government the evidence—or, I should say, the discussion—at this morning’s SPICe briefing, where we heard from Dr Andy Williamson, who said that this policy area might very well benefit from the input of an informed citizens panel made up of those who would be affected. The work of such a panel would underpin any ministerial consideration of how to proceed with an issue on which there is generally public understanding—though not for the approach that had been previously advocated—and as a result, there might be much more informed community buy-in to any proposals that might be brought forward.
Are we content to proceed on that basis?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
In fact, the whole nomenclature of this stuff is difficult to be certain about, but, for citizens assemblies, let us talk about the idea of a unit of about 100 people convening to undertake a proper exercise.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
That is very helpful. Some of that will be the subject of the debate that we will see in the chamber. I share your analysis of the nature of subjects that can be best deliberated through this process.
Given that there is other engagement going on, as you say, how is that quantified as a cost that the Government is undertaking across the different portfolios? Are you able to quantify the cost of the engagement that the Scottish Government is currently offering?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Colleagues, that might mean that you would be devolving to me the ability to agree that that session might be private in order to protect and respect the anonymity of those individuals who might feel that they want to contribute, and to work with the clerks to ensure that we can identify a format that the individuals who might want to contribute feel that they could support and feel confident in. Do members agree to keep the petition open and to next consider it at a round-table discussion where we will hear direct evidence, in a format that is to be agreed, from the people affected.
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
PE1986 was lodged by Andy Paterson on behalf of the help not harm campaign, and it calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide free testing kits for drugs in public spaces such as local pharmacies, libraries and university buildings. We last considered it on 22 February, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, which, in its response, highlighted three forthcoming reports from the drug checking research project that all focus on the use of self-testing kits. It also notes that an implementation group has been established and that implementing drug checking will be a priority for the group. No specific timeline is available, as that is dependent on the Home Office and its licensing application process. Two of the applications were due to be submitted by the end of April and a third before the summer. Do members have any comments or suggestions?
I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government to request a summary of the key findings and recommendations of the drug checking research project’s three reports on the use of self-testing kits and to ask it to indicate whether the findings have altered the Scottish Government’s position on the free provision of such kits in public spaces.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Are members content to add that to our list of actions?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Agenda item 5 is consideration of new petitions. In case people joining us to follow our proceedings this morning have a petition that we are considering I will let them know, as I always do, that, ahead of each petition’s first consideration, we invite the Scottish Government to comment on it and we seek comment from the Scottish Parliament’s independent research unit, SPICe.
The first new petition is PE2013, which is on the implementation of a national dashcam safety portal and was lodged by Neil McNamara. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce without delay a national dashcam safety portal, as has already been agreed by Police Scotland.
The SPICe briefing explains that a national dashcam safety portal would provide an online channel for members of the public to submit directly to Police Scotland evidence of potential road traffic offences that is recorded on dashcams, helmet cameras and mobile phones.
The Scottish Government’s response to the petition highlights its recent programme for government commitment on the issue. The programme states that Police Scotland will seek to build on the Scottish Government’s investment to make it easier to submit digital evidence to report poor road user behaviour. Dundee has piloted the digital evidence-sharing capability programme, or DESC, which allows a request for digital evidence to be sent to a member of the public.
Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?
