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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 985 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Katy Clark
I want to go back to the issue of evidence and data. Last week, we considered the Scottish Government鈥檚 proposal that a majority in a jury should be changed to eight out of 12, but we also considered the possibility of it being 10 out of 12.
Sandy Brindley, I appreciate that we have no hard data and that there is no concrete evidence on this, but what are your impressions鈥攁necdotally, from the women with whom Rape Crisis Scotland works鈥攐n the outcomes from juries? How often is the decision, either to convict or to acquit, unanimous, and how often is the jury split? What kind of splits are you told about? I appreciate that you might not have formally surveyed the women with whom Rape Crisis Scotland works, but what is your impression? I feel that we are working in the dark, so even anecdotal information is of interest.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Katy Clark
Thank you. That is helpful.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Katy Clark
Are complainers not given the information on the majority?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Katy Clark
Is it your understanding that the Crown and the defence agents are not provided with that information either? We can obviously take up that point with them.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Katy Clark
My question is similar to Fulton MacGregor鈥檚, as I want to pick up on what Sandy Brindley said earlier about wrongful acquittals. The Scottish Government is proposing to offset any impact on conviction rates that might be caused by the abolition of the not proven verdict. That is, it would address the balance between convictions and acquittals by changing jury size. Do you accept that that would have the result that there is likely to be no change, given that you have just said that only a handful of cases would be affected? Would the change in jury size offset the abolition of the verdict in the way that the Scottish Government suggests?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Katy Clark
Perhaps it is not helpful to get into the current benefits. To a large extent, you have simply mirrored what is happening down south, which many of us hoped would not be the position. Our hope was that we would be doing something better. However, let us not get into that discussion. Let us focus on whether the employment injuries benefit is fit for purpose
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Katy Clark
Surely the point is that the council would do work to inform decisions on eligibility. Would that not add to the policy process?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Katy Clark
Surely the lesson that we have learned from previous experience is that, if we do not start the work soon and do it as quickly as possible, we end up taking on the schemes that already exist for extended periods. Surely we now have an opportunity. Whether it is an advisory group or a council鈥攚hatever we call it鈥攚e should surely try to implement as soon as possible a body that would do the work to inform the policy approach. What is the timeline?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Katy Clark
Let us presume that the consultation says that work needs to be done to inform a new benefit. What would the cabinet secretary鈥檚 timescale be for her stakeholder advisory group? How quickly will that work start?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Delivering Scottish Social Security
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Katy Clark
I am asking about what lessons you think have been learned over the past few years, so that we better migrate benefits in future to provide a quicker process to get to what might be a better outcome.
