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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Our final new petition this morning is PE1868, which was lodged by Laura McKain and which calls on the Scottish Government to provide support to single parents by increasing the council tax discount available to single parents from 25 per cent to 50 per cent and lobbying the UK Government to create a working single parent tax allowance and a household income-based child benefit.
In its submission, the Scottish Government highlights its commitment to reforming council tax and measures that it has in place to support low-income households. Those include the council tax reduction scheme, which provides relief to just under 500,000 low-income households, and the Scottish child payment, which pays £40 per week per eligible child. The Scottish Government has committed to extending eligibility to under-16s by the end of 2022. The Scottish Government argues that the Scottish child payment, alongside the best start grant and best start foods, could provide more than £5,300 of financial support to families by the time that their first child turns six.
Having had a chance to consider the submissions, I wonder what suggestions members might have as to how to proceed. It is quite a complicated matter. There appears to be a determined course of action that has been put in place by the Scottish Government. It has committed to extending eligibility. It does not have the competence to intervene on matters relating to UK income tax if they are beyond the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government has indicated that it is supporting 500,000 low-income households.
As important as the issue is, I am not immediately clear as to what further course of action lies open to us, having now sought and obtained the views of the Scottish Government. I do not know whether colleagues are minded to close the petition on that basis, or whether you feel that there is some further avenue that we could possibly explore.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
You made reference to a survey. Is that a new survey?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I am pleased to say that Rhoda Grant has a season ticket to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee this morning. She joins us, along with Liam McArthur MSP, for petition PE1804, which is on Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd’s air traffic management strategy. The petition, which was lodged by Alasdair MacEachen, John Doig and Peter Henderson on behalf of Benbecula community council, calls on the Scottish Government to halt HIAL’s air traffic management strategy project and to conduct an independent assessment of the decisions and decision-making process of the ATMS project.
The clerk’s note summarises the extensive actions that were taken on the petition during session 5, which included holding oral evidence sessions with the petitioners, representatives of HIAL and the then Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity.
Since the petition was last considered, we have received four submissions: two from HIAL, one from the cabinet secretary and one from the petitioners, all of which have been circulated as part of our meeting papers.
I invite our two visiting MSP colleagues to comment before committee members do so. Since he has been waiting for his moment in the sun, I invite Liam McArthur to comment first.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I am sorry—when was that? Is that a new development, or was the committee previously aware of it?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Do we know whether the round-table event took place?
The clerks are not sure. We want to confirm whether that event took place. If it did, it would be sensible to establish any outcomes from it.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
That meets with the general agreement of the committee.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
There was a members’ business debate on the issue in session 5, which, from memory, was led by Alexander Burnett.
Do members agree to take that approach?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Now that we have heard from Christine Grahame and read the submissions, I turn to colleagues for their comments.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I was struck by Emma Harper’s advocacy of holding off a round-table discussion until we see a little more about where things are going. However, we can still reserve the right to come back to that. We should be clear that we will write to the UK Government about the A75. Do committee colleagues agree to that?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
The next continued petition is PE1662, on improving treatment for patients with Lyme disease and associated tick-borne diseases, which was lodged by Janey Cringean and Lorraine Murray on behalf of Tick-borne Illness Campaign Scotland. The petition calls on the Scottish Government
“to improve testing and treatment for Lyme disease and associated tick-borne diseases by ensuring that medical professionals in Scotland are fully equipped to deal with the complexity of tick-borne infections, addressing the lack of reliability of tests, the full variety of species in Scotland, the presence of ‘persister’ bacteria which are difficult to eradicate, and the complexities caused by the presence of possibly multiple co-infections, and to complement this with a public awareness campaign.”
When the petition was considered previously, in February 2021, the session 5 committee took evidence from the then Minister for Public Health and Sport, Mairi Gougeon, who was supported by Scottish Government officials Dr Gill Hawkins, the senior medical officer for health protection and public health, and Professor Tom Evans, the chief medical officer’s specialty adviser on infectious diseases. During the session, the minister stated that the Scottish Government was
“committed to supporting people with Lyme disease, finding new and better diagnostic and treatment tools, and trying to prevent it in the first place.”—[Official Report, Public Petitions Committee, 24 February 2021; c 2.]
It was revealed that the Scottish Government would soon be holding a round-table event that would bring together clinicians, patient representatives and public health experts to discuss testing, treatment and raising awareness. The minister confirmed that the Scottish Government was keen to develop an infectious diseases managed clinical network and that consideration of Lyme disease would be included in its workstream. The minister and her officials also agreed that more research was needed to underpin the development of better treatment options, particularly for people with longer-term symptoms.
Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions that they would like to make?
