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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Public Participation Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
John Sultman referred to that a moment ago when I talked about a more detailed programme. Fair enough.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Public Participation Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
I think that that is contained in the recommendations as we move through the report—
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Public Participation Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
You also make reference to the Happy to Translate scheme and the ability of those whose first language is not English to follow proceedings. What was your feeling about that? I am interested to know whether any of the 19 panel members had any experience of Happy to Translate. On what basis did that come up as an option?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Good morning, and welcome to this special meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2022. I say “special”, because I am especially pleased to welcome members of the citizens panel on participation, who will discuss with us their report and the recommendations that arose from it.
We have received apologies from our colleague Fergus Ewing, who is not able to be with us today, as well as from—sadly, at the last minute—Alexander Stewart, who was supposed to be joining us remotely from deepest, darkest Bridge of Allan, where I thought communications still reached. However, he has had communications issues and is unable to join us this morning.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Are the committee members who are present—David Torrance and Paul Sweeney—content to take item 3 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Public Participation Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
The substance of today’s meeting is the committee’s public participation inquiry. We have with us around the table some of the 19 members who were able to join in that work. Paul MacDonald, Gillian Ruane, John Sultman, and Maria Schwarz have joined us in the room—and I now see Ronnie Paterson, who is joining us remotely. Mr Paterson, I take it that that is a mirror on the wall behind you and not a porthole. I assume that you are joining us from home and that you are not on board a ship somewhere.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Thank you. That is one of the advantages of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. We are taking forward the issues of an individual with a petition rather than bringing forward individual party-political considerations, which sometimes allows us to have a meaningful conversation about the particular issue at hand.
Thank you for your appearance with us this morning.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
I should mention that sceptics of the proposal for home reports—of which I was one at the time—were concerned about the principle underpinning home reports, which is that they would do away with the need for undertaking expensive surveys when people were making offers for properties. On the question whether a home report is deficient, it has certainly been my experience in the years since the introduction of home reports that, when someone buys a home, a survey has still been needed as part of the requirements of the mortgage lender.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
I am content with both of those suggestions. Are colleagues agreed to take those actions?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Item 2 is consideration of continued petitions, the first of which is PE1900, on access to prescribed medication for detainees in police custody, which was lodged by Kevin John Lawson. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that all detainees in police custody can access their prescribed medication, including methadone, in line with existing relevant operational procedures and guidance.
Colleagues will recall that, at our most recent meeting, we took evidence from David Strang, former chair of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce—I gather that he is now part of the implementation group—and Dr Carole Hunter, who is a former member of the task force. Our discussion with them has informed some of the areas that we would like to explore during this morning’s meeting.
I am delighted to say that we are joined this morning by the Minister for Drugs Policy, Angela Constance, and her officials from the drugs policy division of the Scottish Government: Morris Fraser, head of delivery and support unit, and Henry Acres, head of cultural and structural change.
Good morning, and thank you all for coming; you are most welcome. We can move straight to questions, but if you would like to say something by way of introduction or clarification, minister, we would be happy to hear it.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Jackson Carlaw
Our second evidence session is on PE1928, which was lodged by David Gallant. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide free rail travel for disabled people who meet the qualifications for free bus travel.
We last considered the petition at our meeting on 20 April 2022, when we agreed to write to Transport Scotland to seek an update on the fair fares review. A copy of Transport Scotland’s response has been included in our meeting papers for today.
At the meeting on 20 April, we also agreed to hear evidence from the petitioner and from Sight Scotland. I am pleased to welcome to the meeting the petitioner, David Gallant, and Nicoletta Primo from Sight Scotland. It is a pleasure to have both of you with us. The petitioner is not always present when we consider their petition. It is helpful that both of you are here today.
Members have a number of questions that they would like to ask, but we understand that both of you wish to say a few words first. I am happy with that. The clerks will have told you that your contribution cannot be longer than a speech in the chamber. We look forward to hearing from you. Have you drawn straws to see who will speak first? I see that David Gallant will do so.
