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 2022 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
You mentioned the “Just say no” campaign. I was hoping that you were younger than me. I remember that campaign and I was hoping that you would not remember it.
Can you say a bit about the importance of external organisations in delivering some of that education? I will name check Public Health Scotland, which is also involved in some of this work. The reason I mention that is that I want bodies such as Public Health Scotland to listen to this evidence session so that they continue to engage with the panel and other agencies, as set out in the Scottish Government’s response to your recommendations. Can you say a little bit more about the importance of external organisations as part of drug education both within schools and in communities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
Audrey Nicoll mentioned the importance of data sharing between the public sector and the third sector. There was supposed to be a single shared assessment between the NHS and third sector organisations. That was to be prioritised, but it has never been implemented. Can you give us any update on that, cabinet secretary? In your written response, you mention that the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill could be a vehicle to finally realise what we want to see happen in that area.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
I have no further questions, but may I write to you about the specifics of that case to see whether a best-practice template could be embedded in public practice?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
Can you say a little more about why you think that embedding this topic in core education is so important, and why it is important that parents are involved in what that will look like? I guess, from what you are saying, that you would also expect Education Scotland to be speaking to you about what that might mean in practice.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting) [Draft]
Tackling Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Bob Doris
I thank everyone for their answers. I am sure that Public Health Scotland, Education Scotland and the whole family wellbeing fund will be listening to this exchange in order to engage with you on an on-going basis.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Bob Doris
So you are open minded about reviewing the level of fines that could be levied.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Bob Doris
I do, convener—I am inspired by your line of questioning. We heard evidence that large landowners who are doing their job properly do all this community consultation and meet all the requirements of land management plans anyway, because that is what good landowners do. However, the same landowners tell us that it is going to be really expensive to do what they are already doing anyway. What is the cabinet secretary’s view on the idea that many of the costs that are associated with land management plans are the costs of activities that good landowners are probably already doing anyway?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Bob Doris
My colleague Mark Ruskell made an interesting point about local place plans. Cabinet secretary, I think that you made the point that I would have made, which is that having an additional focus on local place plans might create inequity in the approach, given that they are not consistent and that not every local authority has one. However, I draw your attention to the 10-year strategic plans that local authorities should have for their areas. What will be the relationship between a 10-year planning document and land management plans? I ask because community consultation is a core aspect of 10-year local authority plans and we would not want local authorities to assume that community consultation that took place in relation to a land management plan would suffice in relation to the job that they should already be doing directly with the communities that they serve.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Bob Doris
It sounds as though the Government is open minded but has not made a final decision on whether the list should be extended. One reason for extending it would be to give anonymity to some who would like to report a breach, because of the power imbalance that can exist in some rural areas. Those people could, for example, go through their community council or an enterprise agency to report a breach.
Another way to address that issue might be to allow the new land and communities commissioner to have the proactive power to instigate their own investigation if they believed that there was potential evidence of a breach. Would you like to see that?
