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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 760 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Minimum Core Obligations
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Professor Boyle, you talked about a Colombian example. Will you say a little bit more about that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Minimum Core Obligations
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Yes, please. If you could follow up with an email, that would be great.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Minimum Core Obligations
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thank you, Professor Miller. I will come on to housing in a—
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Caroline O’Connor, do you want to add anything before I hand back to the convener?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, Caroline O’Connor and John Taylor. Thank you for your opening statements.
This question is for John. Our committee papers state that Mears has an obligation to keep a daily attendance record of people in initial accommodation. What data do you collect and record, and how is that data used? Do you think that better information sharing between your organisation and the Home Office and local authorities would be helpful?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Caroline O’Connor, do you have anything to say on the issue?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Is it a tailored service, or do you tell people when they come where the mosques, gurdwaras and churches are as part of the induction? Do you identify someone from a Muslim background and say, “This is what is available for your faith”? Is it individual, or do you just provide the information in group settings?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I will come back to the issue of vulnerable people and traffickers a bit later on. Last week, representatives of COSLA and local authorities spoke to the committee about the work that Mears does with them, and they said that they had a great working relationship with you. However, we have heard lots of concerns from the third sector, which delivers many of the key services that asylum seekers rely on. Would you say that there has to be a good working relationship between Mears and the third sector? How do you feel that that relationship should be improved?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
You said earlier that you signpost. In other words, you work with the third sector to bring in whatever is needed for an asylum seeker. Is that right?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Asylum Seekers in Scotland
Meeting date: 16 May 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I have just one more question, which is on religious settings. John Taylor said earlier that, sometimes, you will have to go out of the city centres and provide accommodation in hotels in rural areas, but what we have heard in evidence is that, for people coming from a foreign country, where they feel at home is in their religious settings—their mosques, their gurdwaras, their synagogues, their churches or anywhere else they feel that sort of comfort. As we know, a lot of rural areas do not have many such places of community. Do you take that into account when you move people around? Moreover, does the data that you collect on people’s backgrounds tell you what they require with regard to community settings and houses of prayer?
