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 3441 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Can you explain a little further what you imagine that might involve?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Literally six.
It is an interesting concept. The question is: how attractive are such things to the wider public? It was something of a surprise to me when looking at sales to see how little Scottish Parliament-branded material is purchased online.
We have not looked at what you have suggested. As with all suggestions, I will go back and allow officials to give it consideration. However, I am slightly mystified as to whether there is the sort of wider appeal for these products that one might hope.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Jackson Carlaw
No鈥攁lthough I think that we are looking into that. For as long as we were in a sustained period of very low inflation, which was the case until the most recent issues became prevalent, this point did not seem to be one that mattered. We may well return to the ASHE index; we did not move away from it lightly. When I came to you last year and discussed the ASHE index, with a recommended increase of 1.5 per cent, I said that we were not trying to be virtue signalling. We believed that there was a lagging factor in the ASHE index, which would be reflected this year. We were surprised to find that that did not happen; we do not know why it did not happen. That is obviously a matter that we want to investigate. It has an impact on the salary increase of 成人快手 and on staff cost provision. We think that the average weekly earnings index is a more reliable index for us to use, while we investigate the issue.
You are right: over a period of time, the situation is as you suggest. There was a year when we did not take the ASHE increase of 5.1 per cent but took nothing, because we were reflecting the stresses and strains of the pandemic in that particular year.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Jackson Carlaw
As someone who is IT-blind, I share your astonishment at those matters. The corporate body, which I might uncharitably say is much like me on those matters, expects to be given some comprehensive understanding and briefing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Jackson Carlaw
I assure you, convener, that we had a presentation on that, which was extremely persuasive. I am sure that we can facilitate your engagement with that presentation, if that would be helpful.
As we are a couple of old-school stalwarts, I will add that the Official Report is now sent to all members at the start of each day. That was at my request, which I made because of an underlying prejudice of mine. When there was a physically produced Official Report in hard copy on paper, members would regularly be seen in the chamber picking up a copy and perusing the wider discourse of parliamentary debate. Now that the Official Report is available only digitally, I wonder about the extent to which members spend any time looking at it to see what has been discussed in Parliament beyond their involvement in a particular debate.
To come back to the original point, on whether the Official Report is an important document, I think that it is, but the corporate body continues to think of ways in which we can ensure that there is wider engagement with the Official Report by members, because it is a valuable way of updating members on the wider portfolio of issues that are being discussed in Parliament.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I thank the petitioner, Amy Lee, and welcome the new petition. Does the committee agree to hold the petition open and to seek information from the bodies that we have identified? Once we have those responses, we will consider the position in due course.
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Item 2 is consideration of continued petitions. The first is PE1862, which relates to introducing community representation on boards of public organisations that deliver lifeline services to island communities. The petition has been lodged by Rona MacKay, Angus Campbell and Naomi Bremner on behalf of the Uist economic task force. I am pleased to welcome the petitioners to today鈥檚 meeting. Angus has joined us in person, and we are joined online by Rona and Naomi, who will be contributing remotely. Welcome, to you all.
The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce community representation on boards of public organisations that deliver lifeline services to island communities, in keeping with the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018. We last considered the petition at our meeting on 14 June. At that point, we received an indication from the petitioners that they would very much like to give evidence in respect of the petition. We agreed to that, so we have the petitioners with us this morning.
The committee has a number of questions that we might wish to explore with you, but before we do that, have you agreed that one of you will be an introductory spokesman on behalf of the three of you?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Jackson Carlaw
The question is, therefore, whether you have anything that you want to say to us in advance, or whether you would be content for us to move to questions first. There will also be an opportunity to sum up at the end, if we do not cover ground that you would like to cover.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Carry on, please, whoever is going to do it.
Arm I nominating you, then, Angus? Rona and Naomi, are you content for Angus to take the lead here? I see that they are nodding. That is fine鈥攜ou are content. On you go, Angus.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I call Naomi Bremner. Naomi, can you hear me? Would you like to speak?
