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 865 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Graeme Dey
I think that I should bring in the expert here.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Graeme Dey
That is also determined through the clinical judgment of GPs from conversations with people, perhaps over the telephone. Ultimately, a GP will make a decision based on that consultation.
I acknowledge your point, Mr Rowley, but we are in very difficult circumstances.
11:00COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Graeme Dey
I will deal first with ministerial responses. I noticed the finger pointing in my direction when you were talking about ministerial responses. I hope that what you described is not the case for me; I like to think that my correspondence is turned around very quickly. I am sure that you will tell me if that is not the case.
When I was Minister for Parliamentary Business in the previous session of Parliament, we set up dedicated contact points within Government. I do not mean this as a criticism of MSPs, because they were trying to help their constituents and it was a pretty fraught time, but one of the problems that arose was that the same email was going to three or four different mailboxes, which was creating difficulty in the system. Jason Leitch might say something in a minute, from his point of view. I will mention to the Minister for Parliamentary Business that what you suggest might be helpful. I will ask him to have a chat with health colleagues and then to share with MSPs what is decided.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Graeme Dey
I recognise that description, but it is largely a thing of the past. Only a small number of countries are captured by the red list. All four UK nations have become increasingly aware of the need to avoid such situations. The issue that you describe is one that arose previously, but I am not sure that it is as relevant now, when only a small number of countries are captured by the red list.
If I was not here, I would be taking part in a Covid operations committee meeting with the other UK nations to discuss what to do next. There is regular dialogue on such matters. As part of that, there is recognition of the need to engage with travellers to minimise the difficulties that were experienced previously.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Graeme Dey
I can offer a political perspective, based on the discussions that I have been involved in. We are given extensive clinical advice and, when there are degrees of doubt, that is explained to the politicians before we make such decisions. Progress—if you want to call it that—has been made on the number of vaccines that are now deemed to be acceptable, although there are still a couple that do not pass muster, from our perspective.
From a political judgment point of view, I have felt more comfortable because of the explanations provided by our clinical advisers, who of course draw on expertise from across the globe.
