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 3266 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
I am sorry about that. [Laughter.]
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
The final theme is inclusivity. We have touched on that throughout the meeting, but Paul O’Kane has specific questions about it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
I want to ask about disabled women. Yesterday, we had a meeting with some sports bodies. Representatives from Disability Scotland talked about some of the barriers that disabled women face in accessing physical activity and sport. Those barriers were not only at the drop-out points; there were barriers throughout youth, adolescence and young womanhood. Did you get any evidence about that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
I am interested in how Government will evaluate the success of the patient safety commissioner, once that person is in place.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
The committee heard from the Patient Safety Commissioner for England. It was useful to hear from her and from Baroness Cumberlege. They told us about some of what they learned in setting up that role. My colleagues may speak about that later.
Tess White has some questions.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Martin
We turn to questions on the resourcing of the post and the office, on which Evelyn Tweed will lead.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Martin
Protocol-wise, either we keep the petition open or we close it. If we keep it open, we have to go forward on the basis of what the petition asks for. Closing it would not mean that we would forget everything that was in the petition. We can take the learning and evidence from the petition as part of a wider inquiry and roll it into that work, so we would not be dismissing it or the things that people have said about it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Martin
That is a really good point. As you say, there are a couple of reviews going on in the health board area.
Does Gillian Mackay want to come in on the petition?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Martin
With regard to the substance of the petition’s calls for an agency, are you of the view that Sandesh Gulhane has just expressed, which is that we could close the petition but look at the issues that brought the petitioners to lodge it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Martin
To avoid confusion, before we move on to the next petition, we will take a decision on this one. There are too many letters and numbers, and we will all get confused otherwise.
On PE1845, which calls for an agency to advocate for the healthcare needs of rural Scotland, can I have a show of hands of members who want to close the petition with the proviso that we look into doing a wider review, which is something that seems worth while?
I see that a majority of members are in favour of closing PE1845 but with the proviso that we include the issues in a wider piece of work that we might do.
