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 809 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
That shows Mr Byrne’s years of civil service training. [Laughter.]
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
I remind Mr Ewing what I said about the children and young people’s assembly that we plan to do. We will ensure that young people from throughout Scotland will be included regardless of where they come from and live. That is important. The equality and inclusion aspect of the work is extremely important to get a balanced view. It also means that we do not get the usual suspects turning up at various events.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
The perfect example comes from one of the people’s panels that we did on the lived experience of those with Covid, because it was an example of horses for courses. At that stage, we thought a people’s panel would be the best way to get the information that we needed from members of the public who lived with Covid. Politicians get caught in the bubble of Parliament, so the panel gave us an opportunity to look at how the public dealt with Covid. The long and short answer is that participatory democracy is an important part of Covid recovery and we could use it as an option to enable us to deliver the commitments and listen to people.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
I will bring in Doreen Grove.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
If David Torrance is looking for a definition, I like what Doreen said: “Better ways to do stuff.” That sums up everything we have spoken about for the last few minutes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
I could talk on that for five minutes, but I had probably better ask Doreen Grove, who was at the coalface, to answer.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
As I said previously, I cannot give you a timeline at this stage, because I want to ensure that we get things correct right from the start. I am a strong believer in public participation in the political process, but we need to ensure—exactly as the convener said at the beginning of the meeting—that people’s expectations are correct. I cannot commit myself at this stage. I am not being difficult; had I an idea in my head about a timeline, I would tell you. I want to ensure that we get things correct.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
Yes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
We would. As I said in my opening remarks, we thank the group for its work, which gives us an opportunity to reflect; it has given us pause for thought. You might be surprised to hear that the Government does not believe that it has a monopoly on good ideas. It is always interesting to hear what others have to say.
The short answer to your question is yes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
George Adam
Many of the children and young people whom we are talking about have, we would admit, a cynical view of politicians and politics. I will use the example of young people in Ferguslie Park in Paisley. I might get away with going into Ferguslie Park as I am one of them, but you might have difficulty, Mr Ewing. I have given a perfect example: because I am one of them, they would talk to me. However, we need to ensure that, as Government, we can engage with them and get them involved in the process.
Doreen Grove seems to be itching to say something.
