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 1052 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
That is really interesting. I want to go back to the point about replacing existing cars with electric ones. I presume that those costs will come from your capital budget. Does that mean that you are looking for a big uplift in that budget?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
No, I just wanted to get an approximate figure.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Administrative costs have remained steady for about 10 years, which you could argue is a real-terms cut. Do you have sufficient administrative resources to do your job? What could you do with more?
11:45Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
What you have been describing sounds quite labour intensive, which I imagine would incur additional costs. I guess that the most important thing is that you can evaluate and evidence the work that you are doing.
Would you like to say anything else about the general costs and your budget?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
I want to ask about planning for spending under the new budget that you will get. I am interested in rape, sexual crimes and domestic abuse, and, at a wider level, the culture of police and corporate policies on bullying, racism, homophobia, misogyny and that kind of thing. Are you earmarking funds for those things? If so, can you expand on that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Will the rise in the number of domestic abuse cases feature in that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
I think that this question is for James Gray. Last year, the Scottish Government provided a cash injection to eliminate a structural deficit in the policing budget. I understand that the budget has now been balanced. Given all the challenges, what steps will you take to maintain a balanced budget?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Would that include extra training for officers in any of the areas?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
How much have your staff numbers come down?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Rona Mackay
My second question was going to be about efficiency savings, but you explained all that in your first answer. I will move on to the action that you are planning to take in response to your work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on impact assessments. Does that have budgetary implications for SLAB?
