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 732 contributions
|
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
Who did you go to for help?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
I heard you on Radio Scotland this morning—you did very well. You sounded less nervous than some of my colleagues sound sometimes—you did a really good job.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
My questions were to be on the impact of commercial forestry, but we have covered that quite extensively. Speaking of the issues that need to be addressed, are you in a position to expand a bit more on what exactly needs to happen and what the industry should be doing?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
And that grant is available to landowners for improvements. How is its availability publicised?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
In a future evidence session, we will discuss a number of petitions on healthcare in Caithness. I suggest that we invite the petitioner to join us at that meeting and that we examine all the petitions in that evidence session. Although they are all important individually and they are distinct, they are all part of the same theme and it would be helpful to speak to everyone together.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
I have heard everyone say that deer management and invasive plants—rhododendron, for example—are the greatest threats, but we have spoken a lot about encroachment of commercial plantation tree species into ancient and native woodlands. I would like to hear the witnesses’ opinions on that. My first question is specifically for Doug Howieson from Scottish Forestry. What do you do to prevent that encroachment? How are you tackling that with new plantations? What are the opportunities to address the issue through “The UK Forestry Standard”?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
Thank you. I am sorry for having interrupted you.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
I suppose that I know the answer to this question, but why would a landowner not wish to implement that best practice, and what can we do to encourage them? For example, I was surprised to hear that the proposal for a bit of community woodland was refused. Can that sort of thing be addressed through stronger planning approaches such as community benefit clauses? How do we encourage those who do not wish to do the best, to do the best? I agree that commercial forestry is important to our economy, but we have to ensure that it does not come at too high a cost.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ruth Maguire
This is an important matter. Pam Duncan-Glancy’s response shows that it warrants a full investigation, and I wonder whether a subject committee could take on the petition. I do not know which would be the best committee for that—perhaps the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee or the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee—but it would be helpful for a committee of this Parliament to investigate the matter properly and fully.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
I appreciate the Scottish Government’s response regarding the details of legal aid and the consultation that has taken place. I also appreciate the point about means testing and affordability in a budget context. Nonetheless, the matter is really important. It comes up in my constituency casework—as, I am sure, it does for other members of the committee.
The petitioner talks about the mental health impact on parents. We need to remember that the issue is not simply access to justice but the wellbeing of children. We need to ensure that what we have in place is as helpful as possible to families that are going through break-ups and looking after children.
I suggest that, in the first instance, we write to some stakeholders to seek their views on the issues that are raised, perhaps including One Parent Families Scotland, Relationships Scotland, the Scottish Civil Justice Council and the Scottish Legal Aid Board.
