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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Displaying 2049 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 April 2023
Bob Doris
So, the notification requirements and active engagement from the local authority, social work or whoever will be, as you have described it, a stretch. Perhaps this would be an appropriate time to bring in Councillor Buchanan.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 April 2023
Bob Doris
Do you want to flesh that out a little? Can you give a specific example, other than capacity issues, of where police custody would be absolutely unavoidable, which would mean that we would not want the provision to be included in the bill?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 20 April 2023
Bob Doris
I welcome the regulations, which amend schedule 6A of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and mean that there will be reciprocal candidacy rights with four European nations. I place on record my hope that those rights will be extended in short order to all European Union nationals who have made their home in Scotland. It is a pity and a shame that we are in a situation where we can do that for only four nations because of Brexit. There may be a policy drift.
I will leave it there. I am content with and agree to the provisions before us.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Bob Doris
I see that Sheriff Mackie wants to come in. I am breaking my own rules now, but do you want to add something, Sheriff Mackie? I will take you in a second Meg, if that is okay.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Bob Doris
That is really helpful. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Bob Doris
I have one final question. Meg Thomas can come in on this.
I just want you to bring to life how movement restriction conditions could provide some comfort for the victims, who are usually other young people. Are we talking about restrictions from the local high street, if that is where a lot of the offending and risky behaviour has taken place, or from parks or train stations? I hope you can bring to life for us a little what the conditions would be used for, because at the moment it is an abstract concept for the committee. What kind of restrictions are we talking about? What benefits might there be, if information is communicated properly and effectively, for the reassurance of victims?
That is my final question. Meg, you have been very patient.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Bob Doris
Ruth Maguire has asked most of the questions that I wanted to explore. I understand why most of the witnesses are quite sceptical of some of the aspects of the bill in relation to MRCs, but they jumped out at me as a potential opportunity for a young person. Perhaps I am being naive, but if the case for the young person going into secure accommodation was borderline, perhaps a less severe restriction could be placed on them, which might be provided by the MRCs.
I would like to turn the whole thing on its head, if that is okay. What might you see as positive about using movement restriction conditions—with regular review, and with appropriate legal advice and advocacy—instead of secure care when less restrictive orders have been rejected as inappropriate? So far, all we have heard is the negatives. What are the positives?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Bob Doris
That is helpful. I will bring in Meg Thomas in a wee second, but first I want to put something on record—I hope that I will get nodding heads and will not have to go to three different people to get the same answer. We heard from the first panel that movement restriction conditions can be used when young people are stepping down from secure care back into the community. We heard a concern that, if there is no wider support package, we might be setting up the young person to fail or not meet the conditions. It might escalate their interaction with not just the children’s system but the adult judicial system if we do not get the wider package correct. Do you concur with that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Information Commissioner
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Bob Doris
That is very helpful. I understand that you made a specific recommendation in relation to the report by the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee in session 5. You said that you would like to replace the current requirement for a public authority to maintain a publication scheme with a duty to publish information. I am keen to know the difference between those. I know that the duty would be supported by a legally enforceable code of practice. It would be helpful for the committee to know the distinction between the current requirement and a duty and the difference that that would make.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Scottish Information Commissioner
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Bob Doris
That is incredibly helpful, but I want to be sure that I do not misinterpret that. The current situation feels very process driven. It seems that people say, “I’ve got a policy, I’ve got a document, I’ve got a process. It’s published, it sits there, I’m compliant—tick. Let’s move on and brace ourselves for what requests come in now. We’ve got a policy for how we process those requests” as opposed to turning the whole thing on its head and saying, “We’re an open public body. How are we going to actively publish the information that we think is in the wider public interest to have that transparency?” I want to be sure that I have captured that correctly, because the committee will need to consider the evidence that we have heard this morning.
