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 2049 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Can I follow up on that briefly?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Before I move on to Professor Macdonald, I have a short follow-up question to Lucy Kenyon’s reply.
I have no reason to doubt anything that you have said, Lucy, but, if the day job of the HSE is to look at emerging evidence and patterns in work-related deaths, injuries and ill health, are we legislating to fix the inadequacies of the HSE, or are we legislating to complement an existing mechanism? I will ask Lucy to respond to that, and then, Professor Macdonald, you can answer both of those questions. That would be really helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Thank you very much, professor. That was very brief.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
That is fine; of course. People often say that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
That is really helpful.
Professor Macdonald, to remind you, the question is about whether the bill might create duplication and whether the Health and Safety Executive has a primary role in properly delivering on work-related deaths, injuries and ill health that might also be covered by the bill.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
If we have time constraints, I will bring Lucy Kenyon in, if she wants to say something. I can always follow up with the professor later.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Bob Doris
That is all positive, and I get it and have sympathy for local authorities. They are on tight budgets, and they need to be practical and realistic about where enforcement will take place, but is there guidance to ensure that they do not focus only on areas where they can get the largest amount of income or have the biggest impact in enforcing breaches, rather than individual cases such as those that I highlighted, where enforcement might have a much bigger impact in changing the quality of a person’s life?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Bob Doris
Yes; that is fine.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Bob Doris
I will be very brief. The witnesses might not need to respond, but I want to put on record the fact that the site of the hugely serious fire at the former Promat factory in my constituency was one where there had been industrial and commercial illegal fly-tipping over a prolonged period of time. I cannot say too much more about that, but SEPA has made it clear that it needs to have additional enforcement powers. This is my first day on the committee, but that issue is one that I would like us to look at as the bill progresses. Given my constituency interest in the matter, I wanted to put that on the record.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Bob Doris
The deputy convener has worked through most of the questions that I was going to ask; however, I will take the opportunity to put something additional on the record. We have talked about needing different business models, particularly from large manufacturers and retailers, and not only in Scotland but internationally, rather than having a “take, make and dispose” economy. I am conscious that the word “use” is not always part of that, given what we have been talking about.
Do you want to say any more about the business models that are really damaging our environment and the circular economy? It would perhaps be more constructive to talk about business models that are being developed that the bill could incentivise or drive, if we could make it stronger. I put that on the record; the deputy convener has covered most of what I wanted to ask.
